Course Preparation – Fall 2018

Welcome! Our first class session is Thursday, Aug. 23 from 5:10-7:30 p.m.

Be sure to review the syllabus before the first class.

The readings, site registrations and software installations below must be completed by Tuesday, Aug. 21 by 11 p.m. The analysis post is due by Wednesday, Aug. 22 by 11 p.m.

Pre-course assignments

Required free software to install:

Notes on required software:

  • These three programs must be downloaded and installed before the first class to be sure you can hit the ground running.
  • If you have problems installing that you can’t resolve by searching online, please contact the instructor as soon as possible.
  • After you install them, you don’t have to start using them before class starts, but you’re encouraged to explore what they do and why we’ll be using them.
  • Important: Don’t change any MAMP or XAMPP settings unless instructed.

Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get all the updates posted here:

Analysis Posts

Everyone will receive an individual login for this WordPress site so you can submit the analysis post. If you haven’t used WordPress before, please see the first section on how to post. Be sure to:

  • Add a title that briefly describes the content, themes, etc. of your post
  • Under “Categories,” check the box for “2018 Fall class”
  • Under “Tags,” add one called week0 — with no spaces between week and zero (it will be one of the suggested options when you starting typing “week”). After that you can add other tags that are relevant to what you discuss in your post (e.g. history of programming, computational thinking, etc.)
  • If you don’t want your post’s content publicly viewable on the course blog, please change the “visibility” to “password protected” in the publish box (top-right of the post edit page; see instructions) and enter the password I sent by email. That way everyone in class can read it, but not the wider web.
  • Under the “Notifications” section, always check the “instructor” box, which notifies me your post is ready.
  • Change the status to “pending review” and save

The weekly analysis posts don’t need to touch on every single thing covered, especially this time because there was such a variety of material. Ideally, in the case of a reading/video, a post will explore a particular theme or topic you found most interesting. Choose one (or a few) things and go into more depth.

In the future, if most of the work assigned one week is skills-based or project-based, you can reflect on that experience. Also, as mentioned in the syllabus excerpt, those assignments will be when you want to talk about progress you’ve made and any hurdles.

Some brief explanation can be ok, but definitely avoid summarization for the analysis posts. You don’t have to prove you read everything — if that was the case we’d have quizzes 🙂

The point is to do one or more of the following — or something along these lines:

  • analyze the materials
  • find connections between the materials within a given week (or, in the future, between weeks)
  • relate something to your experience (how it could help you, how it enlightened you about something, etc)

Also, be sure to link back to the materials you reference in your post.

Please let me know if you have any questions by email or in the comments below. I look forward to meeting everyone at the first class session!

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