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Well, what age are they? I'd say age and abstractness of their thought process dictate how to teach them. I'd argue that you start learning programming concept

Well, what age are they? I'd say age and abstractness of their thought process dictate how to teach them. I'd argue that you start learning programming concepts in everyday life, early on, just nobody explains them to you. The lunch line at school. Line Up, first in, first out. Right? -Array/Vector (depending on if you know the number of kids in line, like a single class of, say, 30 or if kids just all get in a line together.) What about "Budging", kids getting kicked out of line for bad behaviors.... For the cafeteria workers this is a While Loop - While there are kids in line, serve them. I can think of so many everyday life happenings that would teach kids computer science fundamentals if presented in such a manner to them. I have used: http://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Beginners/dp/1933988495/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358563128&sr=8-1&keywords=Hello+World http://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Begin... (Not an affiliate link, FYI)

aleprok 14y ago
The lunch line is awesome example of real world programming concepts. Myself I have taught few people how to understand object orientation like this. Though my example is not good for kids, but older people. Told them to think about a beer can and asked them what kind of properties they have. Amount of beer in it, the color of the can, the material of the can, the labels and icons. After they realize these properties I have explained them that how they could code these as class variables. If they understood that I asked them what kind of functionality beer can has. They have answered, opening it and drinking from it. I told them these are the two functions for the class. The opening of beer can is void method with no parameters and drinking from it is a method with parameter and possibly with a return value. If they understood that I could go into the relationship of beer can and beer crate.

aleprok 14y ago

The lunch line is awesome example of real world programming concepts. Myself I have taught few people how to understand object orientation like this. Though my example is not good for kids, but older people. Told them to think about a beer can and asked them what kind of properties they have. Amount of beer in it, the color of the can, the material of the can, the labels and icons. After they realize these properties I have explained them that how they could code these as class variables. If they understood that I asked them what kind of functionality beer can has. They have answered, opening it and drinking from it. I told them these are the two functions for the class. The opening of beer can is void method with no parameters and drinking from it is a method with parameter and possibly with a return value. If they understood that I could go into the relationship of beer can and beer crate.