I am presenting a short talk at the 38th Conference of Research and Development by Tecnologico de Monterrey (CIDTEC) in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. January 23-25, 2008.

Summary

Introductory programming course have two very specific difficulties for novice students. First is the lack use of real world examples in the sessions. It is very difficult to find areas of application where all the students are familiar enough and that offers challenging and engaging examples. Second is the lack of palpable examples of the job done. Introductory courses in other fields generate products that the students can show to others, and feel proud about it. In CS1, for example, explaining cycles by printing a series of numbers on the screen doesn’t yield the same sense of accomplishment as drawing a basic perspective in an architecture class. We propose using Project Hoshimi [1], a Microsoft Platform, as a base for introducing computer programming to CS1 students. Through the paper we discuss the main advantages and disadvantages in our experience of using Project Hoshimi, comparing its use against other more traditional approaches, as well as against other graphic programming methods such as Alice or videogame based learning.

Slides

These are the slides for the short paper presentation (in spanish), any comment is more than welcome.

Source

type:Conference Paper;conference:Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) Educator Symposium;organized by:Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Reference

Gonzalez Sanchez J., Chavez Echeagaray M. (2008). Introducing computer science with Project Hoshimi. Companion of the 38th Conference of Research and Development by Tecnologico de Monterrey. Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, January 23-25, 2008. Page 191. ISBN: 968-891-124-0.