simple searching

I have an assignment for a class I’m taking.

Here’s the standards I need to demonstrate:

Competency 4: Use effective online search strategies

For professional work, as well as classroom assignments, chooses the most appropriate research tools and databases. Applies effective search techniques to produce useful and safe online resources in the classroom.

And this is my standard for success:

Meets standard:

Deploys generic search engines as well as specialized databases to locate learning resources appropriate to the interest and level of students.

So here’s my answer.

My search is to understand how best to teach 9th grade students about learning to program in PHP. I know PHP, and it is a pretty common language. Here is what I did:

I started with this search “learning php for students”.  It was horrible, nothing came back relevant.

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Then I changed the search term to “learning PHP”  Several relevant sites came back and some good resources. 

PHP Tutorial
PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner
Learning PHP 5 - O’Reilly Media
Learning PHP & MySQL, Second Edition - O’Reilly Media
Learning PHP - Part 1: A Gentle Introduction

But I don’t still don’t know the best way to teach these kids PHP. So I continued my search.

I headed over to ERIC, and searched for “teaching programming” this yielded some great results including

EJ826628 - Analyzing Student Performance and Attitudes toward Textual versus Iconic Programming Languages

This article provided some very interesting information - but more importantly, I discovered a category in ERIC, computer science education.  A veritable treasure trove, I could easily spend hours just reading these abstracts!