A few of us have even bought one of your books :-)
My mature students taking basic maths courses in the UK will read the textbook and come back at me with questions that show they have confronted the material and put some time into it. The teenagers need a different approach, games, Web sites with interactive material, carefully chosen written material.
Have you any age data about your participants? Perhaps the video courses?
The age range for my courses is 11 to 65 so far, but I haven't been able to get statistics on the median. It's a touchy subject to ask folks their age, but my guess is the median is about 30, or that it's bimodal with 20 being one hump, and 30 being another.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a computer is already interactive. The idea that you need "graphics" to get students interested is completely unfounded, and the only data comes from experiments from companies trying to sell graphical programming systems for education sales. Even then these studies were done in the 70's and 80's when many people just didn't have computers.
In my experience I've found just making simple text adventure games is entertaining enough. Think about it: It's a game that is approachable by anyone, they are fun, they involve writing, their "graphics" are immediate, they don't require any geometry, and the output looks a lot like the program itself. That's why I teach them. They're easy but still fun.
My experience says you don't need crazy amounts of sensory input to keep people interested, and in fact is just distracts them and frustrates them. Keep it simple, but make sure it has depth that they can discover.
I would imagine the reason kids are likely to prefer graphics is because the games they play involve a lot of graphics so that's what they expect.
I remember in the early 90s plugging away writing various text games in QBASIC then excitedly showing them to school friends who's reaction was mostly "too much reading, not enough guns. Let's play Doom instead".
Of course this was somewhat disheartening and put me off programming for a few years.
The closest thing that I've seen to a comprehensive game creation "kit" is Unity3d but that has a pretty steep learning curve.
One sort of introduction that could potentially work well for teenagers would be to create a mod for an existing game that they already enjoy.
I don't think those kids would enjoy programming a game even with a good kit. They want to play games, not code them, and thus why I said no amount of graphics will get them to.
That is true, although I think one of the main motivations to learning to program (at least for me and I guess many teenagers) is to have something impressive to show off to friends.
Having said that I think you are right to encourage people to use code as a "secret weapon" rather than an end in itself. It is a great "awesomeness multiplier" to other skills.
A few of us have even bought one of your books :-)
My mature students taking basic maths courses in the UK will read the textbook and come back at me with questions that show they have confronted the material and put some time into it. The teenagers need a different approach, games, Web sites with interactive material, carefully chosen written material.
Have you any age data about your participants? Perhaps the video courses?