gdh

Given the technology available to high school kids I am planning on adding a simple app development section to the Bds gr 9 Intro to Tech courses. I have a good program that I think will work with them, Buzztouch , but any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Remember these kids would have no programming experience and a little web design that I wrote 10 yrs ago for this program. (Yup, another pilot project in Ontario).

wbrowne

gdh

Buzztouch is great for mobile app development, but if you're looking to form the basic foundations for software development try Scratch by MIT.

I'm a software developer, I used Scratch to teach my kids programming. It's developed by MIT, forms a solid basis for future programmers.

Open source, so you can see how someone built their app/game/project. Learn by copy. You can take someone's code and rebuild on it. The immediacy of the results and the ability to make changes and see what happens opens their creativity. Highly recommended.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

gdh

Thankyou very much, I will start looking at Scratch this week. Gr 9's will defunately like the immediacy of it as they modify existing projects and see what happens and why. I would like them to see that there is more to the world than FB, word pro, spreadsheets, databases and desktop publishing. I was disappointed to see that most Bus Depts in Ontario are still doing essentially what I drew up in '98 and added a bit of web page devel a few yrs later. I like Scratch and app devel as it will strengthen the students planning/exploring/evaluate/brainstorm fixes process. I will have to make sure that Sratch can be run from the "cloud" as sch bd IT depts will not allow the program to be downloaded unto networked computers. If I have any questions can I MSG you?