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Top ten computer science teaching resources A pioneering head of ICT shares some fantastic routes into teaching children code and computing

Top ten computer science teaching resources A pioneering head of ICT shares some fantastic routes into teaching children code and computing

I frequently see a problem when people (especially techies) try to teach programming to someone (especially non-techies). Many programming tutorials begin with basic programming principles: variables, loops, data types. This is both an obvious way to teach programming and almost certainly a wrong way to teach programming. It's wrong because nobody wants to learn how to program

Good find, Doug. His book is excellent: http://inventwithpython.com/chapters/

Alice is an engaging, introductory programming environment for the creation of animations and games using 3D models. Alice features a drag-and-drop interface that eliminates the frustration of syntax errors for beginning programmers.  This list is for educators who are teaching with Alice or who are considering teaching with Alice (either 2.2 or 3). The purpose of this list is to provide and quick and easy way to ask questions, post ideas and nifty assignments, and generally support all members of the Alice teaching community. 

This won't be a short post, but it'll give you a summary of close to a year's worth of trying to teach people how to program. We know what works and what doesn't, and so far there's a lot of stuff out there that just doesn't work, based on our own experience and what our paying customers are telling us (they're mostly people who tried and gave up on Codecademy, Codeschool, Udacity, and Coursera).

Teach children how to write computer programs British schools should impart skills that will help pupils create the next Google, Twitter and Facebook

This website teaches computer programming. This skill is very useful: with programming you can automate computer tasks, make art and music, interpret and analyze survey results, build tools for other people, create custom websites, write games, examine genetic data, connect people with each other, and the list goes on and on.

"We don't teach students how to read code. Actually we don't event teach them that they should read code for the most part."

This collection of links and applications highlights just the tip of the iceberg of educational resources that are available on the web. If you are interested in teaching yourself a new skill or learning a new topic indepth in your spare time, hopefully some of these will be of use. ** Collection of Computer Science courses **

"Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" is a free e-Book that teaches you how to program in the Python programming language. Each chapter gives you the complete source code for a new game, and then teaches the programming concepts from the example. "Invent with Python" was written to be understandable by kids as young as 10 to 12 years old, although it is great for anyone of any age who has never programmed before."

Kids Like . info is dedicated to bringing you the best, and most fun, educational resources for free. Our main emphasis currently is on teaching computer programming, math, and science. Information about business and innovation will be coming in the future.

"To inspire the next generation of [Tim Berners-Lee]s and Ada Lovelaces, we need to excite children about the art, as well as the science, of computing"

Do you want to build a game for Android, a theme for your blog or a twitter desktop client? Have a great idea but lack the development chops to take it from the pages of your legal pad to the App Store? Want to make sure your kid learns to program, even though your local school system may not offer the best options? This post should give you a good starting point for learning to program.

Educators have been tapping into the wildly popular online game Minecraft for its potential as a learning tool for a while now - to teach physics, math, and computer science. But until recently, the game was mostly the territory of computer science teachers, and even they were forced to use the commercial version of the online game. So a few months ago, two teachers, Santeri Koivisto and Joel Levin, decided to make the software more accessible and relevant to teachers. They joined forces to found MinecraftEdu and started offering discounted educator licenses to Minecraft.

"The Boolean Machine is a tool for visualizing the effects of Boolean operators on keyword searches. It was created to teach the importance of Boolean operators in effective search strategies."

"That's why I'm so impressed with a new release from No Starch Press titled Super Scratch Programming Adventure (SSPA, for short). SSPA offers up 10 Stages (chapters) that use a comic book format to teach programming with the Scratch programming tool. Millions of kids have used it, and the simplicity of the tool is that it sneaks in real programming concepts and techniques in a fun, colorful manner."

"Introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming. This course teaches students how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently."

Are you teaching Advanced Placement Computer Science? Are you looking for supplemental exercises that may help you students with the concepts? If so this announcement may be of interest to you. Pex for Fun has been around for a while offering coding duels in C#, F# and Visual Basic. Recently though it was decided to invest some time, money and effort to adapt some exercises specifically to help learn APCS concepts. Most students find the differences between Java and C# pretty minor at this level so most APCS students will find this doable even if they have only been taught Java previously.

There is a growing consensus that the way children in schools are being taught information technology is in need of a radical overhaul. Here John Naughton explains the problem and offers a manifesto for revolutionary action