[Year 12 SofDev] sofdev Digest, Vol 116, Issue 24

Ian Fernee IFernee at stpats.vic.edu.au
Wed Nov 26 14:15:12 EST 2014 

Visual Basic is a very accessibly language for students starting out in programming. Making links between it your design phase pseudo code and your development code is also close syntactically. The development environment in Visual Studio has always been quite intuitive and Microsoft have also just released the free community edition with some interesting features for software development including work in mobile device development. I applaud your thoughts in programming the software development course in some different languages, I think it is a good idea for professional development and allows you to make strong links to these in classroom teaching. There also looks to be quite good support for programming in python in this new edition http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs Enjoy!

Ian Fernée
Head of IT Faculty
St. Patrick's College Ballarat
1431 Sturt Street Ballarat 3350
www.stpats.vic.edu.au

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Subject: sofdev Digest, Vol 116, Issue 24

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Programming Languages? (Carlos Santander)


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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 03:00:18 +0000
From: Carlos Santander <CSantander at mcc.vic.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Programming Languages?
To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List"
        <sofdev at edulists.com.au>
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        <0cbed412cf0f45b6ad1d27a2c736eeee at EXCH2013-VM.meltoncc.local>
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Thanks everyone,

This will really help planning something for a head start timetable. Over the course of the year is it essential for students to do programming such as Visual Basic??

From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Kevork KROZIAN
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 1:45 PM
To: Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Programming Languages?

A great find John and thanks for sharing it with us

Kevork

From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au> [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Savage, John L
Sent: Wednesday, 26 November 2014 1:20 PM
To: Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Programming Languages?

Python is a very nice first language, and very powerful too. I have been trialling http://www.programarcadegames.com/ (an American college course) with a year 10 class. They like it and they get it. We've looked at codeacademy.com and a few others over the past couple of years and while they are often very slick we've been unimpressed by either their pedagogy or suitability for secondary students.

This site presents a self-paced chapter by chapter program. Each chapter is supported by videos on Youtube and consists of a teaching block where students would do some copy and paste into IDLE, a set of multiple choice questions to test understanding, a theory worksheet to reinforce, and finally a lab to apply. The labs are well structured and the students are guided through the structure and logic of a program without being able to copy and paste. I find it incorporates well into a classroom where I can sit with individual kids and steer them in a useful direction.

Lesson one treats IPO by building little specialist calculators, and by lesson 4 the kids are writing a text based adventure game (based on an old BASIC game "Camel"). If a student perseveres (and they probably will because it's fun) they will have produced their own animated game, having explored arrays, iteration and classes along the way.

With WingIDE or Pycharm it's a great combination.


From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au> [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Carlos Santander
Sent: Wednesday, 26 November 2014 12:50 PM
To: sofdev at edulists.com.au<mailto:sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Subject: [Year 12 SofDev] Programming Languages?

Hi everyone,

This will be my first year teaching SD, just wanted to know what programming languages everybody uses throughout the year?
I'm thinking that it might be good to use the Term break to set online tutorials for various programming languages or is best to focus on one?

Thanks.

[CSANTANDER]


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