Re: Free GNU/Linux intro class for teens advice? Purchase box? Squeak/Smalltalk programming
2015-07-07 6:08 GMT+02:00 Glenn English <ghe@slsware.net>:
>
> On Jul 6, 2015, at 6:12 PM, Marc D Ronell <mronell@alumni.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone tried running a GNU/Linux intro class for teens? Can
>> anyone share their experiences, thoughts or suggestions? Feedback
>> based on actual experience would be most helpful, I think, but I would
>> appreciate any insights.
>
> Have a look at a problem set from Harvard's CS50 course:
>
> https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/x/psets/0/pset0/pset0.html
>
> This is Harvard's take on an intro to CS, and much of it would be over the heads of a group of teenagers. Most of it, so far, has been fairly hard core C, but they start out using Scratch:
>
> https://scratch.mit.edu/
>
> Scratch looks to be more aimed at kids, but you might be able to get some ideas from the CS50 site.
Scratch is very good to teach the basis to pre-teens (and possibly as
a starter for older kids).
To go beyond that, have a look at Alice: http://www.alice.org.
Plain C requires a lot of effort before producing any visible result.
Instead, you may want to have a look at Qt and its IDE: QtCreator. Its
C++. It makes it easy to produce a windowed application with moderate
user interaction.
I had a look at Smalltalk once. It looked good until I got into
introspection of introspection of introspection... That got me lost
:-)
Frederic
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