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This chapter focuses on computer science teaching methods that fit especially to be employed in the computer lab. The uniqueness of the computer lab as a learning environment for computer science is explained by the fact that it enables learners to explore their problem solving strategies, to express their solutions to a given problem, to get feedback regarding to the correctness of their solution and to reflect on it, to develop large projects, to explore new topics, and to deepen their understanding of the nature of the algorithms they develop. The aim of the lessons in the MTCS course that are dedicated to this topic is to expose the students to usages of the computer lab as a learning environment and to let them realize how it may improve their future pupils’ understanding of computer science ideas. One of the main messages of this chapter is that the learning of computer science in the computer lab is not limited to programming tasks; rather, the computer lab can be used in additional pedagogical ways that further enhance learners’ understanding of computer science. Specifically, the following topics are addressed in this chapter: what is a computer lab?, the lab-first teaching approach, visualization and animation, and using the Internet in the teaching of computer science.

This article suggests a song debugging activity that brings together two key ideas - the analogy between learning and debugging and the pedagogical potential of music in Computer Science Education (CSE). The paper can be viewed as the fourth in a series of papers published in inroads about the course Methods of Teaching Computer Science in the High School, but it can also stand on its own merit, since it discusses issues that are relevant to CSE in general.

As a response to curricular changes in Israel and high school teachers' requests, a special leading teachers' course was created. The course has three main goals: deepen participants understanding of the object oriented paradigm; strengthen the group as a professional community; and foster leadership growth.

This paper reports a study in which 11th grade students were observed, while engaged in several learning activities that address general aspects of recursion. One of these learning activities focused on the creation of recursive descriptions using natural language. The class discourse was recorded and analyzed, in order to locate patterns of students' expressions and ways of thinking. The present finding is two-fold. On the one hand, a class genre was created and used to refer to recursive phenomena and to describe them verbally. On the other hand, although they used a shared set of some agreed-upon terms, the students tended to individually construct their unique recursive descriptions. These individual methods of assembly are labeled hereafter as "private syntax". It is concluded that learners' and educators' awareness of both the "building blocks" of any recursive description and the several possibilities for assembling these blocks, might help in the process of understanding recursion in general and in further construction of recursive functions in particular.

The 17th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2012) took place in Haifa, Israel on June 3-5. ITiCSE 2012 was among the official Centenary events of the Alan Turing Year and all three keynotes were related to the Turing Centenary.

Every teacher would like to have students that are motivated towards autonomous learning with self-enthusiasm. This Tip presentation will offer one method for achieving such a goal.For three consequential years (1998-2000) I was teaching a "computing literacy teaching methods" course for CSE students in the Technion. The focus of the course was on computing teaching methods and learning processes.A major part of the course was devoted to a project the students had to develop. They had to collect data, analyze it, organize and represent it to their colleagues. They had to work in small teams and could choose their own topic as long as they were using different computing tools such as Internet, email, spreadsheet, and others.The projects ranged topics such as: Wine, women in Islam, Michelangelo, UFO, wedding traditions, Greek mythology, and Marathon history.