Logistics
- Today
- Seating arrangements & roll
- Course & instructor introduction
- Success in this course
- Brief discussion of "programming"
code.org
and getting started on thecode.org
course
- Wonderings/comments?
Roll & Seating Chart
- Temporary seating chart today; revise/finalize it next time
- Why choose a seat
- to see/hear better
- to be near friends
- to be near helper/helpee
- to have access to electrical power
- to be closer to/farther away from me
- Change places if you want
- Take roll; produce seating chart
Instructor & Course Introduction
- Me
- Philip East, east@cs.uni.edu, cs.uni.edu/~east (web site)
- I have moderate to severe hearing loss, so please speak loudly
- I like talking about teaching and learning and trying to understand it and how to do it better
- Wonderings/comments?
- Course information (from syllabus) discussion/questions
- My office hours and office location?
- Course grading elements?
- Nature of homework assignments and submissions?
- Nature of feedback on assignments and submissions?
- Is there a final? (what? or what instead of?)
- Extra credit?
- Anything else? Wonderings/comments?
- My office hours and office location?
- What else do you know or what to know about the course?
List & discuss student responses.
- Why are you here?
List & discuss reasons students supply.
- Anything else? Wonderings/comments?
Course Success
Our goal is to be successful? What does that mean? What can we do to make the course successful? (Discuss student responses to the following.)
- What does success look like? For you?
- What does success look like? For me?
- You achieved a level of programming ability that allows you to make informed choices about whether to program or to learn more programming.
- You learned enough programming to be willing to allow your students to try programming in your classes.
- You have a reasonable idea of how you might introduce your students to programming and kinds of activities you could use to do so.
- You feel that you could help students learn programming beyond what you presently know (or remember when the teaching occurs).
- You believe programming is (or is not) useful for your students to learn and have a good rationale for your belief. (The rationale should be based on what students can and need to learn in public schools and the basis for your conclusions.)
- What can I do to enhance the likelihood or degree of success for reaching our goals?
- What can you do to enhance the likelihood or degree of success for us all?
- Attend class and think/question during presentations and discussion. (What is being said? Do I understand/does it make sense? Do I agree? ...)
- Ask questions when you don't understand/agree.
- Persist when I am too dense to see your point.
- Do all the assignments to the best of your ability.
- Seek help when you have difficulty on the assignments. (e-mail, office hours, classmates, ...)
- Try stuff beyond what is assigned or what you know.
- Think about assignments from the teacher's standpoint, e.g., it's goals, why/how it is useful, how it could be adapted, ...
- Wonder about how/whether programming is similar to or different from other content.
- Be curious about programming and the teaching and learning of programming.
- Anything else? Wonderings/comments?
Programming
A major focus of this course is programming and teaching programming. So, ...
- What is programming?
- Preparing a set of instructions for the computer to carry out.
- Basic elements/aspects/skills/understandings of programming
- "simple" data and collections of "simple" data representing the "problem" being solved
- determining the manipulations of the data that "solve" the problem
- sequencing action statements that accomplish the desired manipulations
- selecting between alternative actions (with action/no action a possibility)
- repeating actions a given number of times or under specified conditions (so long as something remains true or until something becomes true)
- modularizing a set of actions—creating a new action by combining basic actions (and/or previously created actions)
(data, actions, sequence, selection, repetition, modularization)
- Anything else? Wonderings/comments?
The code.org
Course
Bring up the code.org
assignment. Have students signup, join my course at code.org
, explore, and start work on the course.
Next Time:
- Plans:
- Final seating chart
- (Continue) Work on code.org course
- To prepare for class:
- Sign up as a teacher with code.org if you have not already done so
- Join my class at code.org
- Begin work on the course
- Bring any questions to class
And final questions? comments? wonderings? . . . See you Thursday.