[Year 12 Its] Ideas for starting programming

[Meadows, Roslyn M]

I ran VB for a group of Year 10 girls this year, you can d/l it for free (VB=
 2005 Express Edition http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/  ) and MS h=
ave provided a set of video tutorials http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/expr=
ess/vb/learning/  to help absolute beginners. 
I did robotics, flash and gamemaker with the same group of girls, but I beli=
eve they got much more value out of VB than robotics (more relevant?). I fou=
nd robotics a bit of a pain actually - many pieces in the kits were missing,=
 the Control units need 10 batteries each etc etc)
 
Personally I would leave Microworlds for the year 7's!!
 
Cheers
 
Ros Meadows
Lauriston Girls School
meadowsro at lauriston.vic.edu.au <mailto:meadowsro at lauriston.vic.edu.au> 
meadows.roslyn.m at edumail.vic.gov.au
 
Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, includin=
g the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog. 
Doug Larson

________________________________

From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Mark Kelly
Sent: Mon 11/13/2006 9:51 AM
To: is at edulists.com.au
Subject: [Year 12 Its] Ideas for starting programming



Hi all.  My SoD kids will probably be starting with zero programming
experience and I was tossing around ideas for a kick-off point.

So far I've thought of Microworlds (Logo) - they did in in year 7 so it
should be a warm and fuzzy reminder of their childhoods  :-)

And Lego Mindstorms - they can program cars and robots.

Then they might be ready to go to VB or similar.

What do you guys use to kickstart programming?

Mark

--
Mark Kelly
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