Dan Anderson - Viewpoint School
Speaking Topic: OSSIE: Using Computer Programming to teach Concepts integrating Science, Math and Technology

Dan has a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Master of Science in Engineering. Before becoming a teacher, he was a manufacturing engineer in the photovoltaic industry. He has been teaching for over 14 year and currently teaches Computer Science to children in grades 7 through 12.

Abstract

Teaching Computer Science courses in high school involves many choices, including answering the following questions: Which operating system to use? Which programs to teach? What books to use?

In this talk I will introduce a set of principles and explain why I have chosen DrScheme and ”How to Design Programs” (Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, and Shririam Krishnamurthi) as my instruction tools and Linux as my operating system.

DrScheme http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/ is an open source software interactive programming environment for the Scheme programming language which has a graphical user interface. Its student-friendly features include support for multiple "language levels" (Beginning Student, Intermediate Student and so on).

I will also present my experience teaching with other operating systems (Windows 3.1, Novell Networks 3.12, Windows 95, Windows 2000), languages (Pascal, C++, Visual Basic and assembly), and application software (too numerous to list here) and compare it to my experience teaching with Linux and Dr.Scheme. In addition, I plan to provide examples of student projects.