[Year 12 SofDev] programming languages advice for 2011

[Laurie Savage]

We’re not using VB but we’ve been playing with PHP classes to build
galleries and pages of bizarre div boxes. I haven’t touched on
inheritance with my students but  at
http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/638 “The Bear Necessities”, Vikram
Viswani takes the reader through a very simple 3 bears model that starts
with Momma, Poppa and Baby instances of the class Bear and then  creates
Polar and Grizzly bear classes that inherit and extend the parent Bear
class. He finishes by taking the reader through a real world
authorization module that applies the concepts. It’s written for PHP,
but I think the ideas are transferable. I think biological examples (I’m
an ex-palaeontology student) are a great conceptual introduction to
classes: animals have methods and properties – all members of the
“class” Macropoda have fur, large hind feet (properties) and hop
(method). Wallabies are a small (property) class that inherits the key
properties and methods from Macropoda.

Classes, stacks and queues have generated some delightful spontaneous
role-playing from my students; having swivel chairs on wheels provided
an exuberant stacking/queueing model.

 

Laurie Savage
ICT Teacher/Student Assessment and Reporting Coordinator
Pascoe Vale Girls College