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Obviously there are a huge range of teaching approaches to novice programming across the world, but let's take the Barnes and Kolling "Objects First With Java" text book and Blue J environment . It's very popular (ranked as number 1 in three of the Amazon technical books categories for what it's worth) and used as an introductory text in many computer science departments. One of the features of this well designed textbook is that it aims to teach high level concepts as a priority over lower level language constructs. The BlueJ environment enables students to experiment with object orientation by calling methods on objects in a graphical environment. The text book encourages students to read code before they write it, and "wire in" small segments of their own code into a pre-written program. The lecture slides which come with the book give specific instruction and worked examples; students typically recieve this sort of instruction before working on small examples in the lab. In fact, working on small examples after a lecture on programming concepts is in my experience a fairly common pattern in first year instruction.

Kirschner, Sweller and Clark recommend the practices of a) providing worked examples for students to read and b) providing process worksheets which explain to students the processes they should go through when solving problems.These are both sensible suggestions but I wouldn't say they were unusual for computer science teaching. I would suggest that we tend to use a mixed bag of instructional techniques rather than basing our pedagogy on pure theory. And so therefore: we probably get our first year teaching right at least part of the time. Which is a bit of a comfort.

“Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” is a free book (as in, open source) and a free eBook (as in, no cost to download) 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.

The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges contains the conference proceedings for each of the regional conference sponsored by CCSC. It is distributed to faculty in over 200 colleges. Past issues of the journal have included articles such as: CS Accreditation Update Putting More Science into Computer Science I Teaching Ada at the Senior Level Ethical and Professional Issues in Computing Closed Laboratories in an Entry-Level C Programming Course Computing Curricula at a Community College Conducting User-Friendly Internet Workshops Campus Data Networks: A Case Study Non-Isomorphic AVL-Trees Experiences with Scheme in a Liberal Arts Computing Course   Past issues of the Journal are archived in the ACM's Digital Library. There is open access to the CCSC archive section of the Digital Library. For your convienence, you can also access the library by conference proceeding. Note: You need an ACM account to access these documents. If you don't have one you can sign up for a free account, it is simple and easy!

CS10, The Beauty and Joy of Computing, is an exciting new course offered by the UC Berkeley EECS Dept. Computing has changed the world in profound ways. It has opened up wonderful new ways for people to connect, design, research, play, create, and express themselves. However, just using a computer is only a small part of the picture. The real transformative and empowering experience comes when one learns how to program the computer, to translate ideas into code. This course will teach students how to do exactly that, using BYOB (based on Scratch), one of the friendliest programming languages ever invented. It's purely graphical, which means programming involves simply dragging blocks around, and building bigger blocks out of smaller blocks.