Mr. Self's DST 4A0 Page
Using Java - Ready To Program
Back to Mr. Self's School Page
We are teaching Java using Holt Software's "Java - Ready to Program". We have taught
Turing (as well as Visual Basic) in Grade 11 and have moved to Java in Grade 12. In
Grade 11 we used a series of programs to teach the main techniques of programming. In
order to introduce Java, I decided to have the students write essentially the same programs
in Java. (This is how I attempted to learn Java - so I thought it appropriate that the
students learn this way). We will use something I learned at Teacher's College in 1982:
the Spiral Approach to Learning where we go from the known to the unknown.
Java is far more complicated to learn than Turing. Holt Software has done a great job
of creating an easy-to-use environment to learn Java. Normally, the learning curve to
get started is quite steep. Holt have created some templates and some function keys that
provide an excellent editing/debugging environment.
In approaching Java in this way, I realized I should create a reference that explained
how to do simple things in Java that we already know how to do in Turing. I am
keeping just a few steps ahead of the students, and I can see that this reference is
invaluable to the students.
Click here to see the file of Differences Between Turing and Java
Click here to see the file of Programming Problems to be done in Java
Click here to see some completed Applets