Rubber Duck Debugging Lesson

How can a rubber duck help you be a better programmer? How can they possibly have a place in our classrooms? What is rubber duck debugging?

When I first heard about this strange phenomenon, I was a little sceptical. Is this just another gimmick? Is there a surplus of rubber ducks that need repurposing? No, apparently this is a recognised programming technique that really works.

What do you do?

You need enough rubber ducks so that each pupil has their own duck. Amazon sell bags of rubber ducks for a reasonable price.

Run through the presentation with them, give them the 3 Python programs to practice with and watch as your programming classes learn how to solve many of their programming problems without having to rely on you!

If you are having trouble finding non-squeaky ducks you can either print out an image of the duck to be blue-tacked to the corner of their screen for everyone, or try the squeaky ducks but tell them, if there is an excessive amount of squeaking they will have their duck taken away and given a "flat duck"instead.