Beginning Programming

School is very different: I once worked with a man (not in an educational setting) who lamented the fact that schools don't teach what they did in the 1950's, which directly contributed to students and scientists' abilities to create the computer revolution: counting in bases other than 10, logic, games. Unfortunately our students are not receiving this same knowledge so before students can program we need to give them logic skills. The following are some activities that give pre-programming logic skills.

• iKnowThat Thinking Games: teach students problem solving skills with simple programming puzzles
• Pivot Stick Figure: highly addictive for students, element of story telling in addition to pre-programming
• CS Unplugged's Programming Languages lesson: introduces giving instructions in a precise order to achieve outcomes