HIV/AIDS education in Tanzania blended with a programming course

Teaching programming offers a novel opportunity to educate students in taboo-like topics such as HIV/AIDS. First of all, the computer serves as a neutral platform to deal with issues that are hard to discuss in traditional contact settings or as a peer-to-peer way. Secondly, the students can use their creativity to design a learning environment that starts from their own interests and problems. Programming skills are needed for both of these aspects because they provide the students with tools that help them master the computing environment. At the same time an actual problem-in this case HIV/AIDS-motivates the students to learn programming that may otherwise seem like an obsolete skill of mainly theoretical flavor.