When explaining code to the class, project your code and use a tablet to draw on top of it. Ask students for debugging suggestions to make them more comfortable finding bugs and to show them that all programmers, even you, make mistakes.

  • Students will realize that everyone gets bugs, even people with coding experience. Use this opportunity to emphasize that finding and getting rid of bugs is a learning experience, so next time it’ll be easier.
  • Assist students in reading code by using drawings to show which lines of code are being executed. Remember to use a big font for your code so you have room to draw.
    • This can help with debugging as you can highlight which lines of code are not executing as you intended.
  • For more information, watch Philip Guo’s CS Education Zoo interview and/or watch Mark Guzdial's CS Education Zoo interview.