Scaffold students creativity by providing brainstorming prompts the day before a project is assigned so students can share more developed project ideas the next day in class.
Direct students in an activity to find Treasure Island by sailing from one island node to another to help them conceptualize finite-state machines.
Survey students about their experience in your classroom to identify practices they find encouraging.
Have students play a game of Telephone and trace the path of a message to introduce how computers create phylogenetic trees.
Have students brainstorm project ideas in class to ensure that every student has a feasible project to pursue.
Introduce students to App Inventor by starting with buttons, images, labels, and text boxes because they tend to find these basic tools intuitive and easy to use.
Have students pair program to increase their interactions with one another, promote retention of female students, and maximize resources.
Misconception: Students sometimes hard-code their apps in App Inventor instead of selecting “Fill parent” to fill the whole screen so their project does not display correctly on different size devices.