[ale] Question about teaching material [Off-topic]

[Douglas Bridges]

A neat little program that can help him mess around with Java is Robocode.
Think of battlebots meets Core Wars. You program your robots in Java and
they fight it out. It is pretty easy to get started, and it could provide an
entertaining framework to try and teach programming. You will need to look
at it to see if it is too hard. Check it out at robocode.alphaworks.ibm.com.

Doug Bridges

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Tillotson" <ale at jeffx.com>
To: ale at ale.org
To: <ale at ale.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 9:52 PM
Subject: [ale] Question about teaching material [Off-topic]


> Sorry to post something off topic to the list but I am sure the members of
> this list will be able to help me.  While it may not have to do with LINUX
> directly it could be helpful in recruiting a new user.
>
> My girlfriends son bought a new game for his computer with a gift
> certificate he got for his birthday, Black and White.  He brought it over
> here all happy to play it on the computer I gave him just a month or so
> ago.  His computer didn't have a video card that could support the game.
I
> started to feel a little guilty about the fact that I had a TNT2 with 32
> megs sitting in my computer but I also was upset that the main, well
pretty
> much only thing, he used his computer for was games.  I made a deal with
> him: write me a program that can take input from a user and the say hello
> to that user,.. aka "Hello World" and you can have my video card.  Well
> after giving him a few short and somewhat painful lessons, I had no idea
he
> was as computer illiterate as he was, he was off on his journey.
>
> Based on searching the web he chose to write the program in Qbasic.  I
told
> him he could choose the language so I wasn't going to discourage him.  A
> few hours later he had done it.  Mind you he was excited exited his editor
> without saving and had to type it in again but he did it.  Later he
> continued to work on his programming, granted it was just a few variations
> on the original task but he was really excited.  I was excited.
>
> Well i told you that to tell you this.... I want to continue to encourage
> him.  He is 12 years old and doesn't have a lot of computer experience
> outside of gaming.  I was planning his next task, should he want to do it,
> include selection statements, then iteration statements and so on.  Is
> there any references, books, websites, curriculums that could help me
teach
> this kid to program?  This kid is bright, very bright but I don't want to
> bore him to death with the type of books I have on the subjects.
>
> Any ideas, experiences, advice on the subject would be great.
>
> Sorry to be so long winded,
> Jeff
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