Using two Python packages, Flask and Requests, we made webapps and client programs to access those webapps (in addition to using a web browser as a client). Some of the kids wrote joke servers—webapps that deliver a random joke when someone connects to, for example, http://192.168.1.128:8080/joke. With our client programs we fetched jokes from each other’s computers. Then we added loops to fetch jokes as fast as possible, learning about denial of service (DOS) attacks in the process, as well as countermeasures like delaying after each request, and blocking requests from specific users and returning messages like “Access denied!”. The kids really enjoyed this! (I made it very clear that DOS attacks were to be done only in isolated environments among willing participants, and not on the Internet.)

We learned how to use tools like ping, netstat, ifconfig/ipconfig, traceroute/tracert, and telnet. We watched parts of a hilarious 1.5 million hits video by an enthusiastic but clueless young man who made the incredible claim that traceroute (tracert on Windows), which he called “tracer-tee”, could give you the IP addresses of everyone connected to Google right now. One of my students read the comments and saw one like, “If you represent the next generation of network attackers, the next generation of security experts can chill.”

Processing[.org] is a great tool for making animated art and graphics with a program. We did quite a bit with it, including making a Stroop Test. The Stroop Test presents words, like red, green, and blue, drawn in a different color from the color the word spells. Here’s an example: Red. You’re supposed to say “green” when you see that.

We learned to make web services requests from our Python programs to places like openweathermap.org, and then plot the results. 

We downloaded a file of over 50,000 correctly spelled words and wrote a program to read the file, load the words into a set, and use the set to identify misspelled words in text entered by the user.

I gave the kids an example adventure game in a webapp, and they set to work adding their own places and pictures. I recommended that if they weren’t creating their own images, they go to search.creativecommons.org to find Creative Commons–licensed images. We ran out of time before we could add audio. One of the students wants to add a cliff to the game, and when the player falls off the cliff, the game plays the sheep scream.