Hi,
Adding a thought: if the ‘Dracula/Wolfman’ story in the git lesson is to be
changed to some actual programming, we run into the ‘in what language’ issue:
we sometimes teach workshops where we teach unix + git + R instead of unix +
git + python. A python-based git lesson would be useless for such workshops...
Lex
> On 29 Jul 2017, at 16:04, Mateusz Kuzak <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Anelda, thank you for starting this discussion. Teaching Git lesson have been
> on my mind quite a lot lately. I have also discussed it with other
> instructors and gathered feedback from the learners. Here are my observations:
>
> * The Dracula and Wolfman content of the lesson is too far away from the
> programming situation. While in theory it should make it easier to understand
> git concepts without focusing on the programming part, I find that it
> confuses learners even more. I believe there is a need for more real life
> example and we should opt for teaching Git lesson after introducing basic
> programming.
>
> * Version Control is like backups, people know they need it (once they
> understand what version control is) but it’s very hard to get them excited
> about it. On the other hand it’s very easy to “sell” git as a collaboration
> tool, via GitHub. Learners are usually very excited when going through
> forking, pull requests and online reviews. In my opinion showing how things
> work via the web interface and only after introducing command line
> equivalents works better. I’m not saying it’s better in general, but we have
> to keep in mind our learners just started using the command line a day before
> and have been using the web and web application for years.
>
> best,
> Mateusz
>
> On 10 Jul 2017, 15:15 +0200, [email protected], wrote:
>> Hi Anelda,
>>
>> I replace the Dracula example with Python code at
>> https://github.com/rgaiacs/swc-git-novice-euroscipy2016. This was for
>> Git Workshop last year during EuroScipy.
>>
>>> I've been wondering how we can simultaneously give a broader exposure
>>> to GitHub GUI as I (since I'm not a software developer but often
>>> collaborate with others on GitHub) mostly use GitHub and haven't had to
>>> use git command line probably for a year now because I could do
>>> everything I needed in the GUI. Not that I am promoting not teaching
>>> the command line way of using git, but for people who've never ever
>>> encountered version control it might be more accessible to first build
>>> a mental model by learning GitHub and then going to the next step of
>>> learning the command line tool.
>>
>> If you are teaching Git for non-developers you can probably stay with
>> the online GUI provided by GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket/... but if you are
>> teaching Git for developers you will need to teach the the command line
>> or any local GUI since otherwise they will not be able to share their
>> changes easy.
>>
>>> I've been wondering if there is something that can come before the
>>> git-novice lesson to help the target audience of our workshops
>>> understand the value of version control and tools like GitHub. Any
>>> pointers to something that is even more foundational to help build
>>> mental models and create a interest to learn version control would be
>>> very welcome.
>>
>> My impression is that the students never program before or only hack
>> some small scripts they don't have experience to give the correct value
>> to version control since Google Docs and similar do a great job.
>>
>> On this line, my last own experience teaching Git showed me that we
>> should use at least two files to make more clear for instructors why
>> version control is important. For example, you can use Dropbox to share
>> code with your collaborator but one day you change the code and your
>> collaborator change the configuration file and next morning the code
>> doesn't work. How do you make the code work again? With Git, you will
>> know of the merge when you two sync and check the differences.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Raniere
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
