On the first day, I'd like participants to fill out a brief on-line survey so I know how many people teach
high school, middle school, etc, how many people teach what subjects,
and what you're expecting from this workshop.
At the end of each day, I'd appreciate it if participants would fill out
another brief on-line survey to give me some
feedback on what topics made sense to you, what was unclear, etc.
By the way, these forms are interpreted by a CGI script written in Scheme, and I
analyze the data using another Scheme program.
| Day | Topic |
| Monday, 6/26/00 | Philosophy; using DrScheme; expressions; single-stepping; defining variables |
| Tuesday, 6/27/00 | defining functions; design recipe |
| Wednesday, 6/28/00 | Conditionals; symbols; Design recipe (version 2) |
| Thursday, 6/29/00 | Structures; graphics and games; wrapping it up |
The software we're using, DrScheme, is available for free download for Mac, Windows, and Unix.
The textbook I used for my first-semester course, and from which this workshop is excerpted, is How to Design Programs, by Matthias Felleisen et al at Rice University. The book is due to come out in print from MIT Press in a few months, but it will remain available on-line for free.
Although Scheme's syntax is extraordinarily simple for a computer language, it is still a new language, and you'll need to learn the vocabulary. Here's my page on the minimal Scheme language, covering spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms.
I've summarized the Design Recipe(s). covered in this workshop, and some additional ones covered in my first-semester course. Use them!
You might also be interested in Jack Crouch's CS1 Web site. Jack Crouch teaches a 9th-grade course on beginning programming, using Scheme, DrScheme, and How to Design Programs.
I've set up a folder for programming examples, many of them developed by high school teachers.