Kdevelop is a good programing tools for students, and QT is a convenient framework. They will give beginners a pellucid entrance. The students can also build c/c++ project to learn essential programming.
teaching of programming need not start from GUI.
i think most of people will have their frist program print out "Hello World"-the famous word- in console. (aren't you?)
in addition using of IDE will make student have little idea about handling code by themselves.
Emacs, and GCC completely free and stable, is a good choice for you. and nealy every linux distribution have them.