Teaching Java in the Summer

I've been asked to teach some current and feature robotics students some Java over the summer. Their programs were pretty basic this year and they'd like to step it up a notch next year. Plus there are at least two new students who will be freshmen next year and want to get a headstart on programming the robots. We might end up having the quite unusual problem of having too many programmers on a team. In addition, just because, I'm going to let my 9-year-old join in too and see if she can keep up. She has been wanting to learn some programming for a while. If she can't go as fast she can get extra help because she lives with the instructor.

So what to do?

I'm going to figure out some type of lesson plan focusing on the stuff they will use, which is mostly the same as what I'd teach someone in a basic survey of Java. Beyond the subject matter I want to make it fun something that they have to work together with, either cooperative or maybe a little competitive too.

I've listed below some of the resources I am looking at:

Here are some FTC related resources:

• First Resource Library

Here are a couple of resources I've found online:

• CoderZ
• Robocoder

The CoderZ site is cool, with actual robot simulations and may be more directly relevant to robotics, but it's not free and in fact very expensive for what I want to do. Robocoder is free, but not nearly as glamorous as CoderZ. I want to keep looking some more but wanted to put out a call to my followers because some of them are pretty smart tech people.

So some type of simulated robot programming is definitely at the top of my list. Conversely, I might just have them work on a project together. Make a game or something else fun. I want to teach them some meta-skills like learning how to use version control and track tasks. These skills are just as necessary as programming itself in a potential job.

So if there are any resources I've missed or ideas I have not yet thought of please leave a comment. I will write another post once I fully flesh out my ideas.