The on-line learning resource The Khan Academy (named after it's founder Salman 'Sal' Khan) is now offering a course on Computer Science. According to the introductory video, Khan are using Javascript along with the framework Processing.js to teach beginners all about programming.

I think this is a nice approach, and I can see this course being very useful material for those that teach beginner courses on web programming.

If you are interested in learning the basics of computer science via web programming, head on over to the Khan Academy Computer Science course, and have some fun learning some genuinely useful concepts.

---

Updated 2022 : note that the above post was originally published in 2012, but is left here for archival purposes. I have fixed the external links, note that Processing.js is no longer maintained.