[ale] Question about teaching material [Off-topic]

[Jeff Tillotson]

Sorry to post something off topic to the list but I am sure the members of 
this list will be able to help me.  While it may not have to do with LINUX 
directly it could be helpful in recruiting a new user.

My girlfriends son bought a new game for his computer with a gift 
certificate he got for his birthday, Black and White.  He brought it over 
here all happy to play it on the computer I gave him just a month or so 
ago.  His computer didn't have a video card that could support the game.  I 
started to feel a little guilty about the fact that I had a TNT2 with 32 
megs sitting in my computer but I also was upset that the main, well pretty 
much only thing, he used his computer for was games.  I made a deal with 
him: write me a program that can take input from a user and the say hello 
to that user,.. aka "Hello World" and you can have my video card.  Well 
after giving him a few short and somewhat painful lessons, I had no idea he 
was as computer illiterate as he was, he was off on his journey.

Based on searching the web he chose to write the program in Qbasic.  I told 
him he could choose the language so I wasn't going to discourage him.  A 
few hours later he had done it.  Mind you he was excited exited his editor 
without saving and had to type it in again but he did it.  Later he 
continued to work on his programming, granted it was just a few variations 
on the original task but he was really excited.  I was excited.

Well i told you that to tell you this.... I want to continue to encourage 
him.  He is 12 years old and doesn't have a lot of computer experience 
outside of gaming.  I was planning his next task, should he want to do it, 
include selection statements, then iteration statements and so on.  Is 
there any references, books, websites, curriculums that could help me teach 
this kid to program?  This kid is bright, very bright but I don't want to 
bore him to death with the type of books I have on the subjects.

Any ideas, experiences, advice on the subject would be great.

Sorry to be so long winded,
Jeff
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