Teaching introductory programming in the multi-media world

Abstract

We address the problems of effectively teaching introductory programming in the multi-media age. We provide a short history on user interfaces, contrasting the line o~iented, turn taking dialogue model with the event driven, desktop model. We summarize the major conceptual outcomes of this shift: the event model itself, the object-oriented paradigm, and the more detailed classification of 1/0 types. We describe how the current generation of tools rely on programmer convention, thus encouraging sloppy coding. We constrast three current approaches to teaching programming with multi-media and present an approach that exploits the advantages of all three.