You can learn a lot about Visual Basic programming by attempting the following projects (all © Nigel Ward, April 2008). A good way to work would be to run Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition and your browser at the same time, using the task bar at the bottom of your screen to switch between them. Alternatively, if you have a very big monitor, you could have the VB window and the browser window open at the same time, tiled one above the other.

The first projects in the above list (up to the 'More Controls' project, which is optional) are basic projects that are meant to be tackled in order. All the necessary code is given, though most projects are intended to be open-ended -  time will be allocated for students to extend each project according to their own initiative (suggestions will be given), writing their own code with minimal help. Some long projects, such as the Lander project, are broken down into parts. 

The next group of projects can be done in any order - if one projects builds on another then this will be indicated. In these projects some of the needed code may NOT be given and will have to be created be the student.

In the last page above, called 'More Ideas', suggestions are given for many possible projects of varying difficulty. No code is given so the entire project must be developed by the student.

Important:

To avoid having to scroll horizontally to read long lines of code, make sure that this browser window is maximized to fill your screen and use View>Text Size in Internet Explorer to choose a smaller text size if necessary.

Immediately after creating a new project you should save it using File>Save All (don't use Ctrl-S as this will save only the form file, not the project file). If you are working at school always  set the location to H:\VB.  Leave the box checked for the automatic creation of a folder with that name to hold your project. Don't forget to save your work every 10 minutes or so (you CAN use Ctrl-S for this).