Comment Entertainment in the class room (Score 1) 633
I've read most of the posts... but to tell you the truth they all seem kinda boring. Take it from a programmer who just graduated from a Technical High School that majored in CS.
I do agree with the large amount of people that say you haven't really supplied enough information for some very detailed suggestions. Although the info would help, that doesn't mean much. What our teach used to do would be to assign us a language... once we finished it we had to come up with a final project, usually it was something small that showcased different coding techniques... that changed once two other kids and I finished QBasic.
We didn't want to do cute little, silly programs. The fastest, and hands down best programmer in the shop created a Mad-Libs game... kinda cheesy, but he finished it in two days. The second fastest (me!,) worked for six months on a emulation of Core Rules from Wizards of the Coast, the entire program came as a bet, because version 1.0 was horribly buggy. The third fastest kid ended up coding his own graphics/drawing program.
After the first kid finished C and C++ he designed Pong. I good game, and it worked well... although he'd end up dumping his memory if he scrolled off the screen.
The other kid and myself ended up heading toward VBasic and coded a rip off of electronic battle ship, entitled network fight boat. It was a blast, we ended up learning all about TCP/IP and how to properly use winsock. What you need to do is to have a competition break the group up into at least two teams... give them a deadline and see what they cane come up with.
Make it entertaining... set up some sort of challenge... where each group is a flegdling software company and is competing against one another to get the most sales or whatever.
The bottom line is that coders should have unbelievable imaginations, since they're still in high school they shouldn't have any boundaries in their heads. Tell them they can make anything they want... but since it's a school setting it can't feature sex, drugs, or anything your school department views as being unexceptable for the masses, i.e. loud music, death threats, Christianity.
The kids will have a great time working on the projects because it will teach them how to work in groups, how to learn time management, and they will have pried in the program they end up with because they created it and didn't have you giving them projects to do. The parents will be happy because their kids are enjoying school and are learning new coding techniques. The school board will be happy because they will obviously be covering the basic programming needs, and you'll be happy because the kids will see you as someone who isn't a boring coder/code instructor.
Trust me on this.
I do agree with the large amount of people that say you haven't really supplied enough information for some very detailed suggestions. Although the info would help, that doesn't mean much. What our teach used to do would be to assign us a language... once we finished it we had to come up with a final project, usually it was something small that showcased different coding techniques... that changed once two other kids and I finished QBasic.
We didn't want to do cute little, silly programs. The fastest, and hands down best programmer in the shop created a Mad-Libs game... kinda cheesy, but he finished it in two days. The second fastest (me!,) worked for six months on a emulation of Core Rules from Wizards of the Coast, the entire program came as a bet, because version 1.0 was horribly buggy. The third fastest kid ended up coding his own graphics/drawing program.
After the first kid finished C and C++ he designed Pong. I good game, and it worked well... although he'd end up dumping his memory if he scrolled off the screen.
The other kid and myself ended up heading toward VBasic and coded a rip off of electronic battle ship, entitled network fight boat. It was a blast, we ended up learning all about TCP/IP and how to properly use winsock. What you need to do is to have a competition break the group up into at least two teams... give them a deadline and see what they cane come up with.
Make it entertaining... set up some sort of challenge... where each group is a flegdling software company and is competing against one another to get the most sales or whatever.
The bottom line is that coders should have unbelievable imaginations, since they're still in high school they shouldn't have any boundaries in their heads. Tell them they can make anything they want... but since it's a school setting it can't feature sex, drugs, or anything your school department views as being unexceptable for the masses, i.e. loud music, death threats, Christianity.
The kids will have a great time working on the projects because it will teach them how to work in groups, how to learn time management, and they will have pried in the program they end up with because they created it and didn't have you giving them projects to do. The parents will be happy because their kids are enjoying school and are learning new coding techniques. The school board will be happy because they will obviously be covering the basic programming needs, and you'll be happy because the kids will see you as someone who isn't a boring coder/code instructor.
Trust me on this.
