Manipulatives for understanding the concept of Linked Lists in a computer science class - the Nodes are the elements of the list and have a slot for you to put in a card (e.g. a section of a 3 x 5 card) with the value being held by the node. Each node has a "next" element that can latch onto another node. Pointers also have slots for their variable names (e.g., "p") and nestle into the sides of the nodes.
The shortcoming of this is that it loses the idea that the pin & hole connections are also pointers, but it reinforces the idea of a chain of nodes. The pointer connections are different because in typical algorithms, we find that more than one pointer is likely to point to the same node. It is also easy to see that creating a pointer variable doesn't automatically create a node.
The goal is to have students practice things like advancing a pointer through the list, adding items to the start of the list, deleting items from the middle of the list, and other algorithms that apply to linked lists. Sometimes, as students are working through writing or analyzing these algorithms, it is too much to keep in their heads!

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