I'd also agree with Excel... it works on many levels and allows incremental progression.
Some ideas: Many audiences. Some might want to get exposure to programming, some might have developer as a career option, and some might want neither but would still find a lot very useful.
Excel as a numbers tool: Recording data, simple automation (cells with formulas), concepts like normalisation. Extending this as a financial tool, or analysis tool.
Applications, that might fit those going to college or those going into the workplace: Routine tasks that need data recorded or analysis. Book keeping/double entry accounting. Applications in other subjects (biology, physics, economics, even English e.g. parsing text).
Excel/data as a communication tool: Analysis of data, visualisation (introduce some Tufte perhaps), objectivity, include in other applications.
Excel/VBA as a stepping-stone to programming. A nice feature of Excel is that it excels in allowing the same problem to be solved in multiple ways. So perhaps a stream of the class for programming concepts (VBA, later Python/R?) while another stream takes applied assignments (individual/group) using Excel's in-built functions?
Version control, however primitive.
Ethics, information security, data protection laws, tax laws in all the above?
Some ideas: Many audiences. Some might want to get exposure to programming, some might have developer as a career option, and some might want neither but would still find a lot very useful.
Excel as a numbers tool: Recording data, simple automation (cells with formulas), concepts like normalisation. Extending this as a financial tool, or analysis tool.
Applications, that might fit those going to college or those going into the workplace: Routine tasks that need data recorded or analysis. Book keeping/double entry accounting. Applications in other subjects (biology, physics, economics, even English e.g. parsing text).
Excel/data as a communication tool: Analysis of data, visualisation (introduce some Tufte perhaps), objectivity, include in other applications.
Excel/VBA as a stepping-stone to programming. A nice feature of Excel is that it excels in allowing the same problem to be solved in multiple ways. So perhaps a stream of the class for programming concepts (VBA, later Python/R?) while another stream takes applied assignments (individual/group) using Excel's in-built functions?
Version control, however primitive.
Ethics, information security, data protection laws, tax laws in all the above?
LibreOffice could be used in the above too.