Students often get the impression of being the slaves of the teaching program, represented in their eyes by the teacher. With CeeBot-3, the teaching program becomes a tool that the students use to develop their creativity, with the invaluable help of their teacher.

Students often get the impression of being the slaves of the teaching program, represented in their eyes by the teacher. With CeeBot-3, the teaching program becomes a tool that the students use to develop their creativity, with the invaluable help of their teacher.

Many programming courses start with a long explanation of theoretical considerations, and only later on are the students allowed to touch a computer. This approach will inevitably fail: even if the students learn something, they will try to forget it as fast as possible afterwards. It is much more efficient and motivating for students and teachers alike to start with practical exercises, and to leave theoretical considerations for later when the students can relate theoretical considerations to what they tried out earlier.

It may seem a paradox to try to teach a topic, and at the same time to try to divert attention from it. However this is what is practiced in foreign language teaching: teachers try to let students concentrate on the communication situation, and they will learn the foreign language because they need it to communicate. This can also be applied to teaching programming: while some students will be fascinated by programming itself, others will concentrate on the more artistic aspects and learn programming "by the way", like some kind of collateral damage.

We live in a world populated by many specialists, who must still be able to collaborate with people specialized in other domains. The aim of a programming course at school is not to make a programming specialist out of every student. The students should rather be prepared to work using an interdisciplinary approach. A programming course with CeeBot-3 can offer this to students. The final animation project, which can take several weeks or months, requires several competences: students interested in literature can write the scenario and the dialogues, visually oriented students will design the different objects, technically interested students will try to record the necessary sounds, and students more interested in the technical aspects of programming will put the pieces together to write the program that will create the film. There are not many teaching topics that require such a large array of competences.