Nifty Assignments

Since the school year is starting soon (actually I think it may have started in some places) I know that a lot of people are looking for fun and interesting programming assignments. While most of us have our favorites that we tend to use year after year there are times when one wants to change things up a bit. perhaps the old assignments are just getting old. Or we've seen the same solutions to the same problems one too many times. or perhaps there are new topics to cover or maybe the results from this year's AP CS exam suggest that some topic needs better coverage.

What ever your reason for looking for new projects the Nifty Assignments page is a great place to start. Nifty Assignments is one of the most popular sessions at the SIGCSE conference every year and has been a staple of the conference for years. The web site lists the assignments and links to supporting documentation and code samples going back to 1999. With several assignments presented every year there are a good number of projects there.

The projects are designed by college/university faculty for use in their own courses and some may be a bit much for some high school courses. But since most of them are designed for CS1 and CS2 courses which are in most ways similar in scope and difficulty to an AP CS course a lot of them are quite usable for AP CS, a post AP CS course or any number of other courses that attract good students.

Check them out. You may find something to help you spice up your teaching.