Week 4 - Variables

Another week has gone and time is flying. One class had a Thinking Skills day so missed their time in the computer suite. They should have caught up by next week.

I'm still happy with the progress pupils are making. They were getting their heads around variables this week, and the idea of storing instances of a helper class in a variable. We did some examples of declaring variables and constants and initialisation. We also talked about meaningful names and reserved words in the theory lesson. They are pretty good at doing what is required in the book but still need much more practice in explaining what they are doing using the correct jargon and using examples. I need to work on this!

Before pupils progress onwards to making a playable piano application, I have set them all a challenge: to improve their Crab game in some way or ways. I'll probably give them a few weeks for this as I am keen for them to start doing their own research into how to do things - they have to start somewhere! This is going to require them to find out how to do something on their own, by using the Greenfoot site and having a look at some games others have written and by doing a bit of research on the internet.

I don't think I could want for two better classes of students! Apart from all being nice people, they are so enthusiastic and hard-working. This is helped by the excellent OCR AS Computing course. It doesn't get any better than this course in my opinion, although I did note this week, AQA are developing a GCSE in Programming or some such title. I filled out a question for them and was a) excited to see OO rather than procedural languages being a main area of study and b) dismayed to see the same old boring topics (databases, systems life cycle etc) in there. I hope they don't make a mess of a potentially great course but I don't think this course will be for us - not unless they get rid of the coursework side of things completely. It's not too late to sort it out, AQA!!

Some decisions need to be made with regard to the GCSE ICT course soon. We switched from the OCR to the AQA course recently, which was long overdue, but these controlled assessments are messy to run (and I suspect the same for all exam boards). There's always a few pupils who are off school or doing something else that takes them outside of lessons and trying to keep everyone on track is interesting! I have also already come across being told one thing in an AQA meeting only to find out that actually, they meant the opposite. I'm not a fan of controlled assessments. They are very boring to prepare students for e.g. databases and then getting them to spend their time doing a similar database task. GCSE ICT is not part of my idea of a rounded education. I think we might have to bite the bullet and not offer ICT anymore soon, only Computing - a risky way forward but it must be the best way, surely? 

I have my departmental budget now so spent this afternoon getting a list of programming books in Java together for the school library and have an order ready for a couple of Kinects for the pupils to start using in their programs. The pupils are looking forward to this.

I'm looking forward to next week. If only all courses were like this one!

Week 3 - Errors and layout

This week was another excellent week. Most students are pretty much at the end of Chapter 3 in their textbook, so they have started to use class methods and the IF construct and have been introduced to the documentation side of Greenfoot.

A common theme this week has been getting pupils to spend more time making sure their code has been indented properly, laying it out using spacing and adding comments, as well as using meaningful names for methods. Another point that needed some work was to ensure pupils started taking more note of the error messages they got when compiling their programs and making sure that they noted these and how they dealt with them for the future.

To help reinforce both the above points, I put together a few worksheets (see the Greenfoot downloads section at www.theteacher.info) and we spent some time talking about these issues, looking at some examples and doing some exercises. It will be interesting to see who takes this on board in the next few weeks and who still needs more encouragement.

Both classes are starting to look like real programmers! As a reward, I bought a tin of chocolates for them and they munched their way through them in the computer labs as they worked on their crab games.

I found a nice competition that I want to get them to enter and have asked them to have a look at the web page for it for homework. I explained to them that it is a bit too earlier at the moment to think about writing code but to take note of the competion and start thinking about ideas. I reckon come November or December, this competition might make a good project for them.

I've also started setting up contact lists for the two groups and am working on a Moodle course for them. One thing I am hoping to do pretty soon is to start regular monthly tests, but I really want them done and marked automatically in Moodle and/or Hot Potatoes to keep the workload under control. I'm also keen to do monthly questionnaires with them in Moodle, to get feedback about how they feel they are doing and to start a Moodle Wiki soon, to help develop course notes.

The only other thing on the horizon is the Sixth Form open evening. We didn't get anywhere near enough Sixth Formers opting to take Computing A Level last year so the course didn't run in the Sixth Form, the first time for 10 years. I think we (as well as lots of other schools, judging by the national drop in numbers) put off most students in KS4, where the GCSE ICT coursework has had a lot to answer for (and the new GCSE ICT courses with their pretty awful controlled assessments are just as bad - but that is a whole different blog!!)

The plan is to emphasise the games writing parts of the course to Sixth Formers and to showcase some of the work the new KS4 Computing students have already done. Hopefully, I'll also have an XBox Kinect set-up by then. I want to get some of the pupils programming the Kinect as soon as I get my budget approved and can buy some. Then hopefully, they can showcase what they have done in some assemblies.

Sneaky huh?

Week 2 - So far so good ...

Both the classes had a single lesson today, where we practised working out whether quite complex expressions using relational and Boolean operators were true or false. They were also introduced to the idea of programming constructions, and we wrote our first pseudo-code using an IF statement.

All the pupils seem to have really thrown themselves into programming in the first two weeks. If I'm honest, I am quite surprised how easily many of them have got hold of some quite abstract ideas and then applied them in actual programs. There has been a lot of fun had so far and although I'm slightly on the control-freakery side, I'm fairly happy that a lot of constructive work has taken place and the laughing is a by-product of that - I hope I'm right and need to work out how to prove it is! Their homework is to get to page 30 in the Greenfoot book by the start of next week - probably an hour or so's work for most of them over the weekend.

Someone at our school has managed to arrange for a speaker to come in from Warwick University and talk about computers and artifical intelligence in a couple of weeks, so that is something for our students to look forward to.

Note to self: I must start looking for interesting trips we can do. And also programming competitions for students. I asked the students if they had any ideas and most said "ice skating". Mmmm. I'm not sure they all have the right idea, yet.

So all in all, I've gone home pretty happy and am ready to plan next week's work over the weekend.

Week 2 - Chapters 1 onwards

Had some really excellent lessons this week in the computer lab. We spent 5 minutes going over some of the terms from last week in a round-the-class Q&A session. The pupils seem to know what most terms are but need more practice in clearly explaining them, and using "for example" to get across what they mean. We spent 10 minutes doing some revision on methods, return values and parameters. By jove, they seemed to have got the ideas pretty quickly. Very impressed!

So, they were then asked to open the text book and begin! They had all read chapter 1 for homework so they were asked to work through all the tasks and then press on to the next chapter. Some had reached the beginnings of chapter 3 and random numbers an hour and a half later although a few had had a head start and done quite a few of the tasks in the first few chapters already, which was great to see.

What was particularly good was that some of the pupils were playing around with the code in ways that weren't asked for in the book. For example, some had inserted their own images and backgrounds into the scenarios and a few had worked out how to insert sounds when certain events occured. There was a lot of laughing going on but all focussed on the wacky things they had discovered how to do. Greenfoot seems to be performing really well so far. I was surprised at how little I was needed! I had a few problems with missing closing brackets and had to explain how the random number generator worked but that was about it - I spent most of the lesson dishing out the praise and getting them to look at each other's great work.

By the end of the lesson, there was quite a spread of progress. I think I need to do some tests for each chapter, to ensure that they aren't going too fast and skipping bits out at the expense of learning everything in a chapter. On the other hand, giving them free reign to experiment with Java and have some fun programming, getting them hooked, seems like the right thing to do, before hitting them with too many tests or too much theory!

Tomorrow will be back to Earth - 50 minutes on expressions using relational and Boolean operators and introducing the idea of the selection construct using the IF statement to test expressions.

Week 2 - The new Windows MSI

I just logged into the Greenroom and see that they have created a Windows installer file to make Greenfoot installation easier - and it works! I've added this week's theory worksheets to the downloads section on the Greenfoot menu over at theteacher.info.

Week 1 - A history of programming

The course begins! In the first double, books, folders, dividers and paper were handed out and we all got organised. Although we were in the computer suite, I thought we had better put programming and computing in context before starting. I watched the excellent Stanford University Lecture 4 on programming methodology the night before the lesson and then prepared a mini lecture suitable for 14 year olds.

They listened to me summarise 4000 years of computational history in 20 minutes, including a bit about Ada Byron and Charles Babbage, 1971 and the microprocessor and the pace of change from then til now. I also introduced Java and the idea of source code, translation, object code as well as OO, classes and objects. Pupils then did a bit of their own research and answered a few questions.

This all took about an hour. We spent the rest of the lesson opening Greenfoot and playing; creating objects, changing code, compiling code and running it.

For the theory lesson, I introduced classes, objects, inheritance and methods. We looked at some examples of different class diagrams. I even managed to squeeze a bit of kinetic thinking skills activities in, by calling out methods for a pupil class, and they had to do the action, taking note of whether the method returned a value or was void. Homework was to get pupils to read through Chapter 1 in the Greenfoot textbook.

All in all, I'm happy with the start. The only problem was a few pupils hadn't set up Greenfoot at home for one reason or another. One thing I did discover is that there is a Greenfoot version that will run from a USB stick (available from the Greenfoot website) and that helped a few pupils who were having installation problems. Next year, I will make sure part of the options application process involves confirming that a pupil has installed Greenfoot at home and done the 'Getting started' tutorial.

Next week, pupils will start working through the activities in Chapter 1 of the textbook. For the theory lesson, I'll be doing some practice exercises on methods (void, return values, parameters, parameter lists) and introducing datatypes. I also need to set up a VLE course for Greenfoot.