Start with a visual programming language for the noobs- maybe something for kids like Scratch and then something where you can make real apps quickly like VB6. My 5 yr old can do programs in Scratch. She hasn’t learned recursion yet, but loops and events are clear to her. She did learn about the shift key in preschool computer class this year though, so she’s probably ahead of some of your students.
Grade people based on how far they get, don’t make them go forward with the rest of the class if they don’t grasp week one. Let them keep iterating on those concepts until they get it. The tragedy of group education is that you are forced to move and it is very hard to ever catch up. I would computerize the whole class and make it self-paced if there is that much variability.
For the non noobs, the Java 2D stuff is useless. It’s completely useless to learn that API. Make them write programs they can use in their life. Do a simple data model for their budget and use Ruby on Rails to turn it into a web app.
PASCAL, Ada, and Modula-2 suck. I hated programming when I was using those and thought it was useless BS. When I was a student, I liked learning c and asm because you learned about how computers work and I liked learning high level languages with easy graphics libs because you could make useful things quickly. I liked Matlab too, because I could use it to check my math problem sets.
Start with a visual programming language for the noobs- maybe something for kids like Scratch and then something where you can make real apps quickly like VB6. My 5 yr old can do programs in Scratch. She hasn’t learned recursion yet, but loops and events are clear to her. She did learn about the shift key in preschool computer class this year though, so she’s probably ahead of some of your students.
Grade people based on how far they get, don’t make them go forward with the rest of the class if they don’t grasp week one. Let them keep iterating on those concepts until they get it. The tragedy of group education is that you are forced to move and it is very hard to ever catch up. I would computerize the whole class and make it self-paced if there is that much variability.
For the non noobs, the Java 2D stuff is useless. It’s completely useless to learn that API. Make them write programs they can use in their life. Do a simple data model for their budget and use Ruby on Rails to turn it into a web app.
PASCAL, Ada, and Modula-2 suck. I hated programming when I was using those and thought it was useless BS. When I was a student, I liked learning c and asm because you learned about how computers work and I liked learning high level languages with easy graphics libs because you could make useful things quickly. I liked Matlab too, because I could use it to check my math problem sets.