Remind students that the computer will run any code that compiles, no matter how unreasonable, because it doesn’t have the ability to determine if code is reasonable or not.
Have pair programming groups rotate computers every 10 minutes in an activity where they have to continue to solve the assigned problem using other pairs’ code to motivate writing good comments.
Provide students with App Inventor starter code they can modify and build on so they have an opportunity to play around in App Inventor without becoming overwhelmed by starting from scratch.
Misconception: Students have difficulty understanding how to share App Inventor projects between different computers.
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.
Use the think-pair-share method of brainstorming to help students get the most out of class discussions.
Be on the lookout for loop syntax that belongs to another language when students are learning multiple languages because they sometimes confuse syntax and create hard to spot bugs.
Ask students “Do we need a loop here?” to help them determine the appropriate loop to use without having to know the proper syntax to write that loop.
Have students write a genetic algorithm in Java to solve instances of the Traveling Salesman Problem so that they can practice object-oriented programming and responsibility-driven design.
Emphasize the importance of documentation when working with spreadsheets or any programming language for future reference.