#hackedu

autonomy... within an environment that includes other people to get help from =D

but yes

that too!

i think the best way to for someone to become confident at something is to actually do that thing and see that they can do itpeople confident is

It must be confusing to some of my students because I tell them always to ask for help, and when they do, i tell them to look it up and figure it out themselves =X

s/it.*$/it/

What zrl meant to say was: i think the best way to for someone to become confident at something is to actually do that thing and see that they can do it

Totally.

oh, we totally did that during our summer program

super super guilty of that

ssun can testify

hi what

i'm always wary of cheatsheets because of that

i can confirm

i feel like it's showing them how to do something instead of having them do the whole thing themselves

But at the same time. Stackoverflow is like a massive cheat sheet. Just got to learn how to use it =)

i'm worried they can make students feel like their hand was held through the process (akin to khan or codehs, though not as bad)

exactly!

but using stackoverflow to figure something is so much more gratifying than using a cheatsheet your teacher gave you

too true.

because it was purely your actions that caused the success.

which is why that cheatsheet is pretty limited.

but when they use SO tell them to type it themselves

and not just copy paste

^^^

need to stress cp is a bad idea

yeah, that was one of the rules we had in hack camp. "everything is optional. do what you want. play video games instead of code, if you will. but there's one thing that's not optional: you must always retype code from the internet. never copy and paste."

mHesby: i wonder if it could be even less

i do like how limited it is

but, for example, i think it'd be much more powerful if they found w3schools on their own

rather than from a link in the spreadsheet

probably true.

and it's honestly pretty difficult for them to not find w3schools on their own

if they google for something having to do with web development

I personally think MDN > w3 but w3 has better docs for people starting to learn

w3s uses more accessible language.

w3 is definitely more beginner friendly

although there's some really janky code in there

yeah, MDN is _far_ better than w3, but at this point the focus is getting them excited and confident

the thing that I think is better on w3 is that they can just run the code right then and there

and w3schools is what's higher in google results, so that's what they'll use

interestingly enough, i didn't see too many people using that feature of w3schools in our summer program

So I'll say this. And. It's completely not related to you and this project and what you're doing. But maybe you can swing my perception one way or another.

please!

My HS class is a UC approved course.

It's a G for the A-G requirements.

they get UC Credits. and it goes on their transcript.

So on one hand.

I feel the need to be very strict and specific about what they need to learn, and create.

On the other hand. I feel programming is about exploring, and building, and learning what excites you and matters to you.

I also have to grade stuff.

Finding a balance between those things. Has been pretty difficult for me.

as I have said before, I can help grade

if they allow that

I have no issues with taking the time to grade.

What's interesting. Is i'm going the complete opposite direction with my MS kids. And letting them have half the day to "do whatever". And the other half we do something as a group, more workshop like.

i'm not very familiar with the uc standards (except for my teachers in high school emphasizing that we need to take courses for the A-G requirements). do you have any links i can quickly check out for more context?

I wish you could do the same thing for the hs classes

imo they would be soo much better and people would learn more if they were motivated

how strict does the grading need to be?

i think one of the big challenges is that to explore, build, and learn what excites you, you need to be able to fail

"These elective courses must be at the 11th or 12th grade level, have appropriate prerequisites, and present material at a sufficient depth to allow students to achieve mastery of fundamental knowledge the prepares them for University work or a future career path."

and if you can't fail because it'll be reflected on your transcript, you're not going to be able to effectively explore, build, and learn what excites you

hmm, that's pretty broad

Totally. But students also need that G requirement to apply to higher universities.

right.

one of the things the calculus teacher at my high school did was setting your grade to your score on the last exam

and then your grade for the semester was what you got on the final

so grades concept to concept didn't matter too much, but people were motivated because they knew they needed to know everything for the final

I do no tests.

i never had the opportunity to take her class, but thethirdone did and many people considered her class to be one of the best

only projects... and required content through Khan and CodeHS....

students who do well in my class. do very well.

those who don't do well. faulter hard.

(cc hardmath123, i think you'd have insightful thoughts on this)

how does paly handle it, hardmath123?

(paly is hardmath123's cs teacher)

mHesby: do your students have room to explore and create what matters to them?

I think so.

what happens when they fail?

they take it again the following year.

which. A few of my students are glad to do. Others... likely to just fail it again.

ah, i should clarify. not in terms of grades, but when they have failures in the class.

hm?

so say i simply cannot wrap my head around recursive functions

this is a bad example, i'm blanking on a good one

most of my memorable failures happened in industry

So.

Students who struggle.

Who Clearly are not doing well and not figuring things out.

I do a lot of 1:1 checkins.

And will sit down with them

and help them figure out what next steps are.

and provide them with stucture

a simple example.

for the students who are struggling with html/css

I'll tell them... and write down in their file. "A very simple organizational structure for the topics you need to cover would be to just do an <h1> topic </h1> then a <p> topic information </p> and then.. if it makes sense for the topic, put an <img>" and we'll go through and get them to do one of them.

the students who fail. won't even do that.

example of a <h1><p><img> website that ends up getting done http://dangel19.github.io/Comp-Sci-Portfolio/ab...

but other students end up sitting there...

And I wonder if it's just that lack of excitement. or if it's something else going on.

hmmm

i wonder if it's a lack of agency

perhaps. some of my students end up coming in with severe low skills too.

even for the example website, "Watching tv shows and playing video games, is something I do when I have been doing since I was a toddler, because I adore watching tv, and playing video games. They always make me have fun with friends and make me laugh all the time." reads like something someone would write for a school assignment

Ha. too true.

and i wonder if that digs into their feeling of agency

Yeah...

My requirements are "tell me about two things you like to do"

and then I give a couple leading questions about it.

on https://dangel19.github.io/Comp-Sci-Portfolio/h... it sounds like they're way more passionate, but still sounding like a school assignment

what do you mean by "low skills"?

mmm. spelling, grammar, vocabulary...

so language. but also logical thinking. attention to detail.

can point to "background" and "backround" and they can't spot the difference.

ah, gotcha

i'm sure if they're excited they can get past that though

true. but they're also not excited.

i know i had trouble distinguishing background and backround for quite a while

(i'm sure if you look at the logs for the #web channel, you'll see old messages of mine spelling it backround)

yeah

how do you grade projects?

which. happens. but when someone points to it. And you can't see it after staring for a while. Is when it becomes difficult. Also, super slow typing skills.

Obviously, these are things to overcome. And I do what I can. And support as well as I can. But they're all things to think about. And how they effect expectations.

Projects must be 100% complete to be turned in.

right, right.

define complete

And they're graded on what summit calls Cog Skills.

slow typing is a _huge_ barrier

Meet the requirements.

yup =/

fortunately there's an easy solution–type a lot

but that takes time

I try and point out the Autocomplete stuff in C9

yeah

haha

what are cog skills?

Cognitive skills that have been defined as skills that are required to succeed educationally.

hah

you're not wrong ;)

my rewording of the cog skills for the html/css project https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iGslH3JQP7w...

and the actual ones https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V17mpEEIBL7...

work log is basically something they fill out that lists, "what they did. how they did it. how it works. where they looked to figure out how to do it"

my biggest concern with all of this is the restriction of autonomy

yup