Saad @ 20th September 2008, 5:43 pm wrote:
As for the introduction, I'll have to disagree with you there, I think its too basic for a grade 10 or any introduction computer science course.
I don't mean as a hole course but maybe the first day or two, you have to remember that people are coming in with 0 programming knowable at all in grade 10. In fact some may not even know what programming is. We don't want to scare students away with learning any syntax and how to use the IDE all on the first few days.
I think one of the big things it does is reinforce the idea that less commands are batter if you get to the same point and the logic is more important then the syntax.
Also the last levels are chalarging enought to keep the more advanced students ocpied well the new comeres to programming get the basic idea of linear programming.
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The game itself I found was not so great. It's a good idea but just a poor implementation. No support for conditionals or recursion. I still prefer Robocode
I don't think the point of the game is to implement a full language with conditionals, etc and it does have a simple recursion (tho never ending) that is needed for some of the higher levels. The idea is to teach and introduce linear programming and then move on to things like conditionals and loops and not for them to need to type anything at all.
Also i don't see this as a replcament for robocode type things but as an excersie to do for a day or two befor geting in to it.
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What about younger children? Not everything needs to be aimed at high school students you know.