Offered: Full Year 2012-2013
Prerequisite: Algebra II or Geometry

The Introduction to Computer Programming course will cover a variety of programming concepts and tools as well as current day issues, in an effort to excite students about learning how to program!  This introductory course will be broken into four modules over our two semesters together, kicking off the year with an application developed by MIT called Scratch. Scratch aims to teach students about the world of object oriented programming through the creation of animated digital stories and interactive games and is a free download available to you from http://scratch.mit.edu

The course will then transition into a longer module, working with an innovative tool designed by Carnegie Mellon University, known to be a revolutionary approach to teaching and learning introductory programmingconcepts.  This application, known as Alice 2.2, is also freely available from http://www.alice.org and aims to teach the basics of object-oriented programming through the use of 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface.  Students will learn about the basics of computer programming using methods, functions, parameters, arguments, if-else statements, and loops through this three dimensional animated environment.The third module for this course will incorporate another freely available application, DrJava, which can be found at http://www.drjava.org .  We will use this SDK (software development kit) to learn some of the basics of programming in a line-by-line textual programming environment. Lastly, the fourth part of this course will focus on current day issues surrounding computer programming and specifically investigate recent studies on girls and computer science. We will  look at a number of scholarships and programs available specifically aimed at getting and keeping girls interested in the ever blossoming field of computer science.

I hope that you will join us for this fun and creative class, offering you an introduction to computer programming!