Theory is useless without implementation and implementation is nothing without an understanding of theory. Implementation and theory are in lockstep but by learning theory you will not necessarily know how to implement, or even really understand, the topics you have memorized. On the other hand it is necessitated by the concept of implementation that you on one hand understand the tools you are using to solve this problem and on the other have reached a point where you see why the tool is used.

You can sit a person in front of a whiteboard all you want. Brainwash them about arrays, maps, matricies, trees and graphs and they have a high likely hood of coming out knowing nothing but verbatum what you have told them. Conversly you cannot sit a person in front of a computer, guide them through the exercises that I described, and expect the same as the student who once sat in front of the whiteboard.

Trees grow from seeds and the best way to plant these seeds are not with an expo marker but, in my opinion, by bringing the student to a crossroads where they need to discover a concept on their own. This is a common tactic in game design: allow the player to discover new rules after you've taught them the basic foundation.

After they understand the basic foundation of how they will be interacting with the machine I think that, with the guidance of the correct assignements in the notebook codesegment phase of the program, the student will be able to create these different routines and ideas on their own.

Some such examples I will provide below:

   - Make some way that will allow you to find a number between two possitions in memory
   - Make a wrapper for this routine that will operate from a starting possition and an offset of the size
   - Make a way to find the distance between two points on an X, Y plane
   - Find a way to apply the same transformation in every item between two points in memory
   - Find a way to implement a way of storing data about an X, Y plane. For instance where a dot is on a section of graph paper
   - Make a subroutine that will allow you to store potentially infinite items in a collection. There are many ways to approch this but the three main ones are to: use a section of memory that is preallocated and reallocated when it is filled, make some way to daisy chain items of the list together possibly by wrapping them in in more data that will serve to aid your program, do the same as the daisy chain but allow the chain to coninue in more then one direction. Hint: this will probably need an init_<structure>, add_<structure>, remove_<structure>, free_<structure> 

This would take a long time but under the correct stimulating guidance the student will be able to seek out why they need these tools. These tasks should be presented after they've completed a project that someone in our position knows that the optimal way of solving the problem was not choosen and a more abstract and simple solution exists. These situations will present themselves often. I've possitioned myself to make these suggestions to my peers at my university who are having a very difficult time passing the classes we are in together. The people who need to see why AND how.

I'll look at their work and say "how about try using X method of solving the problem and show me what you come up with" and when they come up with a solution I say "now try and make it a library. Remove it from your current solution and allow yourself to use it for further work on other projects".

This changes the way they think about programing.