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ClojureBridge Teacher's Guide

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 six pieces to the curriculum: the curriculum slides and narrative, and the capstone app part.1: Drawing Lines. For capstone app part. 2, Turtles Walk (for function study), Snowflakes (another drawing app), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (making sounds), Global Growth (web app with REST api), Caesar Cipher (mini exercise of Strings and Characters).

You may skip bonus sections and a module to fit with a workshop progress. However, to go over part. 2 capstone apps, some bonuses should be covered. For example, Turtles Walk, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and later steps of Snowflakes use sequences and let binding. If your students come to these apps, it's a good idea to get back to main curriculum.

Step 1-3 of Snowflakes app are the easiest to try out. It just needs a flow control in addition to the part. 1 app. While Global Growth is quite a high level app and only for very advanced students. Copy&pasting code only won't take so long, but it requires REST API and ring/compojure knowledge. Snowflakes and Twinkle... are fun apps and worth trying out.

The slides and the narrative curriculum are the exactly the same files. The slide forms are what you show on the projector in front of the room, 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.

Curriculum

Fork the curriculum repository using your chapters's GitHub account (or your own personal GitHub account). You can use your own fork to make changes or tweaks to the curriculum for your own workshop. If you make changes that would be valuable for everyone, please consider making a pull request against the main curriculum.

Schedule

Friday evening: Installfest - Getting Set Up in the outline.

Saturday: Workshop - curriculum.

Preparation

Print the (markdown or pdf) and hand it out to students at the beginning of the day on Saturday.

Room Setup

It works best to have attendees sit around tables, facing one another. This encourages attendees to help one another and makes it easier for TAs to walk around the room, answering questions.

Presentation of the Material

Most workshops have both teachers and TAs. Teachers present the material at the front of the room, and TAs and teachers help students as they work through the exercises on their own and with their tablemates. This is different from how RailsBridge usually works, where students generally work through the material in groups with the help of TAs.

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.

Light Table

Make sure to spend some time during the Installfest or at the beginning of Saturday showing a few key things to do in Light Table:

  • Open the command pane with Ctrl-Space
  • Start an Instarepl in the command pane by typing Insta
  • Set the font size, enable auto-closing parentheses, or add line numbers in Settings: User behaviors
  • Evaluate a file with Cmd-Shift-Enter or, on Windows, Ctrl-Shift-Enter
  • Evaluate a form with Cmd-Enter or, on Windows, Ctrl-Enter

Students who want to do more can take a look at the Light Table tutorial

Beginner and Advanced Tracks

You can survey the attendees ahead of time or during the Installfest to find out their levels of programming experience. If you have multiple teachers available, you could present the material in separate rooms at a different pace, or you could present separate material. Alternatively, you could keep all attendees in the same room but seat them in different tables according to ability.

Exercises

Provide plenty of time for exercises. That is where the real fun happens. TAs should sit with attendees or circulate around the tables as the attendees work on exercises.

Capstone App

Budget your time so that you have enough time for the part. 2 project at the end of the day.

Outline

TODO: add tips under each heading.

Supporting Materials

Other Curricula

The main curriculum is well-tested, but there are a number of other curricula available. Feel free to try them out.