The novice programmer's "Device to think with"

Dermot Shinners-Kennedy, David J. Barnes

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We present some ideas for course material for the introductory teaching of programming that are based on the principle of allowing the students to be the domain experts. The idea is that the students' familiarity with the domain of discourse will make course material more motivating, and that it will be more likely that they will be able to model the concepts and artifacts being discussed. This approach thereby seeks to scaffold the students' understanding of programming-related concepts. For reasons discussed in the paper, we have chosen mobile phone technology for this discussion, but there is no reason why the same principles should not be applied to other culturally-accessible domains.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSIGCSE'11 - Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Pages511-516
Number of pages6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Event42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2011 - Dallas, TX, United States
Duration: 9 Mar 201112 Mar 2011

Publication series

NameSIGCSE'11 - Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Conference

Conference42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDallas, TX
Period9/03/1112/03/11

Keywords

  • CS1
  • Curriculum ideas
  • Mobile phones
  • Student-centered learning

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