We will start with using a free software package called Scratch. This gives us a great graphical introduction to programming and programming concepts.
Programs are the tools that we use when we use our computers. All of these tools have been created by someone. Not every student will be a programmer, but the understanding of software development, programming and what computers can and cannot do will be a vital skill into the future. At Mercury Bay Area School we teach programming in Computers for years 9-13. We start using Scratch, move into Python and finish with dynamic interactive websites using PHP and databases.
Scratch is free and can be downloaded from this site. http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Download
The tutorial we will be working through in class is available in the Shared Resources/Seniors/Year9/_Computing folder.
