1. Telling a Story
Big Ideas: Sequential and Parallel Execution, How to Write a Program
- Computers do things by executing a sequence of instructions.
- Have students translate an English "plan" into Alice code.
- Test frequently - it's good practice and will save you a lot of frustration.
- Instructions can be executed Do in order or Do together. (In a Do together tile, the order of the instructions doesn't matter).
- You should be able to predict what a program does, then test your prediction by playing/running the program.
- Computers are very picky -- they do exactly what you tell them to do.
Vocabulary for this module:
Code/Program: A collection of instructions that humans write to tell a computer what to do.
Instruction/Statement: A specific task (usually very simple) you can give a computer.
Plan/Storyboard: A written-down English description of something (an animation for now) you want to make Alice do.
Test: Hit play to see if your code/program does what you think it will do.
NOTE: See Instructor Resources at the end of this module for things to do after students have finished the online module (e.g., giving a quiz or assessing their learning of the online module, doing clicker questions to deepen understanding/go into challenging aspects, lab).
