Programming Beyond Block Coding

Block-based coding is a decent starting point, and in a bootcamp session for innovation-club students I look at what comes after it. Three activities carry the session: a guessing game that tracks down a hidden number with a handful of yes-or-no questions, the 27-card trick (which encodes information in base three), and the Game of Trust, where simple strategies go head-to-head in a repeated game. Together they show how ideas from puzzles and games turn into precise procedures, the kind you can write as programs, so that text-based coding starts to feel like the obvious next step rather than a leap.