Pocket PC Programming and that is just the beginning

Brian Scarbeau is one of my favorite high school computer science teachers for two specific reasons. One is that he is always trying new things and teaching them to his students. The other is that he blogs about it. Sharing his ideas and experiences with other teachers is a huge thing.

Right now he is getting his students excited about programming by having them program for the Pocket PC. Did I mention that this is only the second week of classes? The thing I like about using Pocket PCs is that it is unexpected. Students all expect that they will be asked to program on big clunky, and there for easier, desktop computers. Something like pocket device would appear to be more difficult. In some ways, of course, it is. But that is pretty much just when you want to do something large and complicated where memory size and CPU performance are issues. Not too many students run into programs like that in their first programming course though.

So when students find out that they can write a real program in Visual Basic .NET for a Pocket PC they start to realize that programming is within their grasp. A little early success goes a long way.