[Year 12 Its] Ideas for starting programming

[Guy Flaherty]

Mark,

You might like to take a look at python and in particular the excellent pygame 
library for teaching students how to program. Not only do you get an 
outstanding programming language that is ideally suited to learning how to 
program and available for just about any platform/OS you can throw at it, you 
also get the added motivation value of making games! All free to use as much 
as you like with lots of possibility to grow and expand as you find new areas 
of interest. Python is a fantastic language to teach with and its simplicity 
yet flexibility are making it a very popular 'beginner's programming 
language'.

If you are interested and looking for resources, or anyone else for that 
matter, let me know and I can point you to plenty of information to get you 
started.

Good luck with deciding :)

Guy Flaherty
Information Systems
Xavier College

On Monday 13 November 2006 09:51, Mark Kelly wrote:
> 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