Hi all, I believe one of the greatest things about SWC is that you are *not alone* teaching and you are not lecturing. So you don't need to cheat. The other instructor in the room and/or helpers could/should help you with typos as they come along. And, of course, you could/should return the favour. :)
Cheers, Marianne On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 9:43 AM, Sarah Mount <[email protected]> wrote: > Welcome Andreas! > > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 8:51 PM, Andreas Mueller <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi. >> >> I'm new to SWC and I'm about to finish the instructor training. >> I have a very basic question about presenting the material. >> >> I'll host a git workshop soon at my university (not branded as SWC but >> using the material). >> Looking at the git workshop at the last scipy: >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKFNPxxkbO0 >> Azalee is going through slides and then doing live coding. >> >> The live coding is exactly the same as in the SWC material, but it's not >> on the slides. >> So I'm not sure where he gets the material from. Is it learned by heart or >> does he have a printed out version next to him or somewhere else? >> > > > It's really entirely up to you, but here's some anecdata for you, which may > or may not be useful... > > Back when I was teaching introductory programming, I used to write out every > examples I wanted to go through with my students before each lecture, > usually the day before. I would put all these programs in a text file and > print them out. When I went to the lecture I'd place the print out face-down > on the lectern (so I couldn't see it) and go through each example etc. in > turn. For some reason writing the programs out first meant I remembered them > pretty well, but having this "safety net", in case I got completely lost, > made me feel a lot better. I think I only referred to a print out about once > in a decade. The safety net wasn't really there in case I couldn't make a > program work, it was there in case I forgot which example came next or lost > my train of thought. > > When I went through the example programs (and this is a little different to > SWC) I would approach them in a "Socratic" style, i.e. by getting the > students to design each program by answering my questions. So, I would say > things like "We want the turtle to draw a square, what should it do first?" > "How far should it travel?" "What next?" "Can we write that in a few less > lines of code?" (hint for introducing iteration), etc. This way, the code > from each lecture would be different to the code I had written the night > before, and sometimes radically so, which meant I had to put the student-led > code up on the VLE after class. When we wrote "Python for Rookies", the > intention was that each chapter of the book would be an expanded version of > these lectures, with extra material and examples. Some chapters (like the > one on recursion) came out almost exactly as we had taught them, although > that book is pretty outdated now. > > The first time I did this sort of thing I was taking a Java class who had > already had most of a year of being taught with OHP slides (those were the > days). On my first program, which was probably trivially simple, I forgot > some semi-colon or bracket or something, and got a compiler error. Some poor > kid said "OH, so YOU get those error messages too" -- he'd spent most of a > year genuinely believing that "real" programmers don't make mistakes. This > convinced me never to present pre-prepared solutions to an introductory > class again. I realised that the most useful thing I could teach my students > was how I think about code and writing programs. That might still not be > very good (maybe I am a terrible programmer, how would I ever know?!) but > unless one of you natural science people can invent a telepathy machine, I > think it is the best I can manage. > > Hope you are enjoying the training! > > Sarah > > > > -- > Dr. Sarah Mount, Research Associate, King's College London: > http://soft-dev.org/ > Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute: http://software.ac.uk/ > twitter: @snim2 > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
