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 two pieces to the curriculum: the curriculum slides and narrative, which is used as a study guide in individual groups, and the capstone app, Drawing Lines, where we play in Quil.
In Berlin our classroom management approach is to provide a link to the curriculum slides and let individual groups of coaches and students decide what material to work through, and at what pace.
The slides and the narrative curriculum are the exactly the same files. The slide forms are what Berlin coaches walk through with students, 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.
Use your ClojureBridge chapters's GitHub account to fork the curriculum repository. You can use your chapter's fork to make changes or tweaks to the curriculum for your workshop. If you make changes that would be valuable for everyone, please consider making a pull request against the ClojureBridge Berlin 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 coaches to walk around the room, answering questions.
The Berlin workshop has organizers and coaches. Organizers make the workshop and direct the flow of the day's events. Coaches help students work through the exercises on their own and with their peers. The curriculum is used as a study guide in individual groups.
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.
We survey the attendees ahead of time and during the Installfest to find out their levels of programming experience. We present the material at different paces with different groups, or even present separate material to different groups.
Provide plenty of time for exercises, including the Quil app that comes after the slides. That is where the real fun happens. Coaches should sit with attendees or circulate around the tables as the attendees work on exercises.
- Getting Set Up
- Introduction to Programming with Clojure [20 min]
- Simple Values [30 min]
- Data Structures [60 min]
- Functions [45-60 min]
- Capstone App 1 [60 min]
- Flow Control [20 min]
- [bonus] Sequences [10 min]