Misconception: Students have difficulty understanding how to share App Inventor projects between different computers.
Misconception: Students get confused about why every character in NetLogo is called a turtle even if they don’t look like turtles.
When explaining program structure, highlight which aspects of the program are static and which are dynamic in order to clearly distinguish between the two.
Misconception: Students believe that in a primitive assignment, x = y could be the equivalent of y = x; they think that the computer science “=” sign is the same as the mathematical “=” sign.
Misconception: Students think that both the IF and the ELSE cases of a conditional are executed every single time a conditional runs.
Misconception: Students believe that reference pointers go both directions such that objects know what points to them.
Misconception: Students think that it’s possible to write methods that add attributes to a Java class.
Misconception: Students have trouble understanding the difference between the “glide” and “go to” blocks in Scratch.
Misconception: Students think that when they create a new variable within a function, that function will automatically return that variable’s value when executed.
Misconception: Students believe that when they assign a = b, they are copying b into a rather than making a point to b.
Misconceptions: Students have difficulty distinguishing between the Broadcast and Say blocks in Scratch.
Misconception: Student think costumes are outfits rather than the overall appearance of a sprite in Scratch.
Introduce young students to degrees, decimals, and percentages so that they can use turn and sound blocks in Scratch.