Tyndal Stone Media, an interactive new media production company, has released CS Solutions II, which introduces students to the basics of computer programming, at this week’s National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio, TX. It, like all of the company’s products, is compatible with the traditional Mac operating system and Mac OS X.
“All of our stuff is actually developed on a Mac,” Ty Gillies of Tyndal Stone Media told MacCentral. “We then put together the PC version and include both copies so that our programs will run on virtually any platform.”
CS Solutions II teaches these concepts using visual metaphors. Students use the basic tenets of programming when working with increasingly complex applications for a 3D robot. From primitives to sub-routines, logic, naming conventions and debugging, students program the robot to walk, step, climb and eventually complete a course.
Using a series of visual metaphors, complicated jargon is made understandable, Gillies said. Concepts such as binary numbers and three-dimensional arrays are explained in the visual format. Students can watch programs being executed line by line as the CS Solutions robot carries out their instructions. They learn exactly how a computer interprets each line of code they’ve created, Gillies said.
CS Solutions II costs US$74.95. A demo is available at the Tyndal Stone Media Web site.