[Year 12 Its] Ideas for starting programming

[Tony Forster]

Consider GameMaker www.gamemaker.nl

This language has very easy entry through drag and drop programming but also 
a sophisticated scripting language which includes structures including: 
Stacks Queues Lists Maps Priority Queues Grids

Though good for games and therefore highly motivating, GameMaker can be used 
for the traditional school fare of databases, data validation and GUI's see 
samples at http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/#samples

The unregistered version is free, that means students can legally work at 
home and they will, game programming is highly motivating.

See http://www.users.on.net/~billkerr/index.htm for lesson plans for the SA 
curriculum


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kelly" <kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
To: <is at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 9:51 AM
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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