Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Welcome and Introductions
Quick Survey
Review of Workshop Format and Sequence
Key Pointers
Sharing Code via Slack
Searching the Internet for Code Help
Online Tutorials and Other Resources
Look for Patterns and Analogies You Can Identify With
Information on School of Informatics and Computing Degrees
Open Discussion and Wrap Up
The Zoom link will be posted in Slack workshop channel.
This workshop is focused squarely on the programming component of a CxD Project. For a little bit of background, you will find that the Computing by Design framework is project-centric in the approach.
Each project has three phases, where programming is a very important component of all three. Our Innovation Workshop covers the breadth of the Computing by Design framework. We have found that the programming in any project presents a fine line between a wonderfully empowering experience (when students struggle and get things working) and a sometimes frustrating experience that becomes a missed opportunity. Therefore we are offering these programming workshops to provide a solid foundation on building the applications.
We encourage you to offer students a two-pronged approach to learning to program. Computing by Design projects provide an "application first" approach to programming where students are provided direct guidance on creating a specific type of application through templates and tutorials -- like with trivia , a chatbot, IoT etc. This approach complements the many great tutorials available online that provide a "concept first" approach by stepping through concepts in programming. Facilitating both approaches for students provides a varied experience -- strengthening knowledge and offering more opportunities to ignite interests.
Identify an online tutorial site that you can use in your classroom to supplement any project work. Over the course of the workshop try out a few basic online programming tutorials from popular sites to facilitate this "concept first" approach, and consider how you might manage a self-paced assignment based on milestones. How might you use these self-guided tutorials as "filler time" or dedicate scheduled time to their completion?
Slack will be our primary communication platform for the workshop. The video above provides a brief introduction on the features of Slack, but more help and tutorials can be found at https://slack.com/help.
Replit is the recommended programming environment for many of our projects. The video above provides a brief introduction on the features of Replit, but more help and tutorials can be found at https://docs.replit.com/.
This workshop is largely asynchronous, providing you flexibility to complete things on a schedule that works for you. Below you will find the sequence of events and videos for the workshop. Notice the two live Zoom sessions on Monday at 1:00 pm and Wednesday at 11:30 am. Otherwise we will use Slack for discussions and impromptu Zoom meetings as needed. Please don't hesitate posting a message on Slack for help.
Slack Channel: #programming-trivia-app in the CxD 2022 Slack Workspace
Zoom Video Conferences: Link will be provided on Slack
Let's program a customized trivia app in three steps!
Now that you have experience with programming for this project...
Consider how you will approach classroom management when students are completing a tutorial like this one.
What will be your expectations?
How much will be individual work versus team work?
Will you assign any code champions to help you support students with questions?
How will you supplement it with other programming content or experiences?
Will you use any online tutorials?
Will you supplement with any CS unplugged activities?
Will you create any custom programming exercises yourself?
Here you will find various insights from teachers and programmers on how to approach teaching in computer science and a project-based perspective. Borrow, adapt and curate the ideas presented to help you develop your unique approach. Don't hesitate asking question in Slack on any of these ideas.
Angela is the CT Instructional Coach at Arsenal Tech High School in Indianapolis and an experienced Computing by Design teacher as part of the iDEW program.
Documentation Link: Note: The CxD trivia project provides two online documents. One document for the broader project instructions that include things like research, design and implementation. The second document is a code reference for programming. In this workshop we will focus on the programming and use the code reference document.
Programming Platform: is the recommended programming platform
Recommended Programming Supplements: Listed in the Trivia Code Reference doc 👉.
A program can be defined simply as a set of instructions that perform defined tasks, and we can use the diagram below to frame the major components of a program. A program can be written to accept particular inputs, like a mouse click, sound from a microphone, or a reading from a temperature sensor. The same program can handle the storage and retrieval of data, like to do items or historical temperature data. The same program can then output something useful, like a current to do list or move robot wheels. Multiple functions are written to control and process everything towards some useful end, each function handling a particular task.
Consider planning an in-class activity where students diagram a computing application (whether a social app, an AI driven tractor, or a video game console). Have them consider what inputs, data, and outputs the program includes. While the students will not know exactly how the engineers designed the application, they can come up with some specific function names to guess how the application processes the information. For example, a phone may have a function called "changeScreenBrightness" that takes the light sensor input to update the screen's brightness (output) based on a stored user preference (data).
This exercise will use JavaScript, the primary programming language for web applications that work in a standard browser. There are many other popular programming languages. A particular language is chosen for implementation based on several factors related to the context of the need. Here are a few you may have heard of -- Python, Java (different from JavaScript!), Arduino, C++ and C#. Note: While HTML and CSS are languages with a defined syntax, they are usually distinguished from programming languages that provide computation and functions.
This exercise takes a direct approach to prepare you for programming a CxD project by taking an "application first" perspective. We will frame this introduction by creating a simplified To Do Application using Javascript.
You are highly encouraged to build (and experiment with) the program as demonstrated in the video to get a feel for the programming. Also, remember to also try some online tutorials as a supplemental experience as explained in the Workshop Prep.
First, in our script.js file, let's declare some variables of different data types and set their values.
todo
is a string
time
is a number
isComplete
is a boolean (true or false).
Then we use a built-in function console.log()
to display the values.
Here we define a custom function displayTodos()
. This allows us to call (or invoke) the function whenever we want.
Here we use a conditional statement (using if/else) to customize the output.
Here we will use a single object variable to hold all the data for a particular to-do item.
Here we will use an array and for-loop to list multiple to-do items. We will ignore the time and completion data for now.
Here we will combine our use of an array with objects. This is the most difficult concept of this exercise and may take some time to digest. But it demonstrates a lot of powerful programming concepts in a very small program. 🚀🚀🚀🚀
That's our warm-up. Whether you found these concepts incredibly difficult or mostly review, please don't hesitate posting questions along with a link to your replit code in our Slack channel for the workshop.
For the programming workshops we simply request that you submit the following two items.
A link to your working code (e.g. replit.com) that demonstrates completion and customization of tutorial material.
A summary of your classroom plan
Consider how you will approach classroom management when students are completing a tutorial like this one.
What will be your expectations?
How much will be individual work versus team work?
Will you assign any code champions to help you support students with questions?
How will you supplement it with other programming content or experiences?
Will you use any online tutorials?
Will you supplement with any CS unplugged activities?
Will you create any custom programming exercises yourself?