There are many ways to teach the ClojureBridge material, and none of them are "right." The following is a guide to working though the curriculum with students based on the experience of some workshop organizers and teachers.
There are six pieces to the curriculum: the curriculum slides and narrative, and the capstone app part.1: Drawing Lines. For capstone app part. 2, Turtles Walk (for function study), Snowflakes (another drawing app), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (making sounds), Global Growth (web app with REST API), Caesar Cipher (mini exercise of Strings and Characters).
You may skip bonus sections and a module to fit with a workshop progress. However, to go over part. 2 capstone apps, some bonuses should be covered. For example, Turtles Walk, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and later steps of Snowflakes use sequences and let binding. If your students come to these apps, it's a good idea to get back to main curriculum.
Step 1-3 of Snowflakes app are the easiest to try out. It just needs a flow control in addition to the part. 1 app. While Global Growth is quite a high level app and only for very advanced students. Copy&pasting code only won't take so long, but it requires REST API and ring/compojure knowledge. Snowflakes and Twinkle... are fun apps and worth trying out.
The slides and the narrative curriculum are the exactly the same files. The slide forms are what you show on the projector in front of the room, while the narrative forms are easy to read detailed explanation of what is introduced in the slides. Students follow along with the narrative on their own computers or use it to work on their own.
Fork the curriculum repository using your chapter's GitHub account (or your own personal GitHub account). You can use your own fork to make changes or tweaks to the curriculum for your own workshop. If you make changes that would be valuable for everyone, please consider making a pull request against the main curriculum.
Friday evening: Installfest - Getting Set Up in the outline.
Saturday: Workshop - curriculum.
Print the (markdown or pdf) and hand it out to students at the beginning of the day on Saturday.
It works best to have attendees sit around tables, facing one another. This encourages attendees to help one another and makes it easier for TAs to walk around the room, answering questions.
Most workshops have both teachers and TAs. Teachers present the material at the front of the room, and TAs and teachers help students as they work through the exercises on their own and with their tablemates. This is different from how RailsBridge usually works, where students generally work through the material in groups with the help of TAs.
This is not the only way to present the material. It is just the way we have seen it done at most of the workshops so far. Please feel free to experiment.
Main curriculum and most of other materials are adjusted to Nightcode 2.3.3. This version needs Oracle JDK 8. Linux OSes are normally shipped with OpenJDK. Linux students need to install Oracle Java. The setup document only explains how to do by apt-get. However, they have a choice to downlad JDK and setup JAVA_HOME/PATH environment variables. They may logout once to make those variables effect on a new shell.
OSX El Capitan doesn't have Java bundled anymore. El Capitan Students must install Oracle JDK 8.
Installation steps are the same as Windows, fairly easy. However, after installation, they should have JAVA_HOME environment variable setup. This, export JAVA_HOME=/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8, would be useful to set JAVA_HOME. Also, the JAVA_HOME setting should be in .bash_profile or some other shell setup file.
As of September 2016, ClojureBridge materials are based on Nightcode 2.3.3. This version has only one REPL on the bottom and InstaREPL. However, InstREPL doesn't work well with Quil and Overton apps. For simple core Clojure only exercies, students can use myproject (this should be created while leningen setup) and InstaREPL.
Since Nightcode 2.0.x, it got installers. However, jar archive is much easier to get started. Typing a single java command is all you need. Tell students to download Jar archive.
Students may confuse where to write code. REPL is handy, but doesn't save code. Also, on REPL, multiline input doesn't work. When code needs to be multiline, code should be typed in editor. Nightcode default setting is auto-save, but it would be a good practice to click save button.
[background] ClojureBridge used LightTable previously, which allowed us to do everything in the editor with InstaREPL.
Materials don't mention keyboard shortcuts. We don't have much experience on Nightcode yet, so we are not sure the same keyboard shortcut works on all platforms. If it does, we will add in the materials. Let us know.
You can survey the attendees ahead of time or during the Installfest to find out their levels of programming experience. If you have multiple teachers available, you could present the material in separate rooms at a different pace, or you could present separate material. Alternatively, you could keep all attendees in the same room but seat them at different tables according to ability.
Provide plenty of time for exercises. That is where the real fun happens. TAs should sit with attendees or circulate around the tables as the attendees work on exercises.
Budget your time so that you have enough time for the part 2 project at the end of the day.
TODO: add tips under each heading.
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Introduction to Programming with Clojure
- 20 min
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- 30 min
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- 60 min
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- 45-60 min
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- 60 min
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- 20 min
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- 10 min
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[Capstone App Pt. 2]
- 60 - 90 min each
The main curriculum is well-tested, but there are a number of other curricula available. Feel free to try them out.
- Minneapolis chatter
- Minneapolis threading
- Minneapolis surviving
- More to come! Add yours here.