By far the best way in my experience (7 years teaching this course) to introduce students to programming is the Turtle! I still use it. They experiment with the concepts (variables, functions, parameters, loops, programs) to make pictures first. Then I do the Internet unit then I go to event driven programing and the concepts are familiar to them. It is the ONLY way that I have found level the experience on my classes. And, the TURTLE is super fun. Fun matters.
At the very least, please don’t kill it. I use it every year and I am concerned that it may go away!
I completely agree with you! I would love to see it come back, even if it is an optional “pre course” module. Last year was the first time I didn’t use turtle coding and my students struggled much more with the parameter concepts later on. I am starting off with some turtle coding this year along with chapter 1 because it helps introduce and it is FUN!
But I am concerned that it will get deleted at some point! I use the Draw a Digital Scene lesson as my first “project” and first pass at creating an app like the Create Task. I spend very little time worrying about memorizing stuff for the bubble part of the test. I feel like the influence of the College Board and traditional universities like Carnegie Melon are doing damage to this course. However, as long as the assets still exist we can build the course the way we want to!
Yup. That is how we access it. That and the old curriculum (2019). My concern is 1) that the old curriculum won’t be accessible some day, 2) that intro to programming students are not being exposed to turtle graphics, the VERY BEST way to get an intro to computer science.