Russel Caldwell wrote: > Let me ask you this. What do you think a teacher needs to do to encourage > students to work on there own, especially in computer science? One young > programmer who impressed me very much said that the teacher should encourage > play which I totally agree with. He said that there is too much emphasis on > creating trivial programs to teach concepts and that students should be > allowed to work on and improve more complex programs. I think he gave > Microsoft XNA Game Studio as an example. What freesoftware tools and > resources would you recommend along these lines?
If I wanted to teach computer science to beginners, I think on the first day I would let the class choose what they want to work on together for the first 2 weeks. The first 2 weeks would be the first iteration. It would start simple, like programming an existing robot, enhancing a game, etc. Each iteration would do something more complex. At the end of the semester, we'd have a robot that insults people passing in the hall and even tries to block them. Oh the mayhem we could cause. :-) Shane /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
