Hi,

in a recent class we replaced the Dracula/Wolfman story with the
situation to write collaboratively a manuscript with very basic
markdown. Maybe that could be a general, programming language agnostic
solution with a scenarion that is releveant for many participiants.

Cheers

Konrad

On Mon Jul 31, 2017 at 03:05:53PM +0200, Lex Nederbragt wrote:
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
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