I am realizing that the way class has been working might not be working.
Right now, I have you read about stuff. Then you watch me work through little code snippets that untangle the concepts. This is great for me (writing those snippets really helps me understand), but I can’t imagine that this is a “learn by watching” kind of thing.
Ideas:
First, I think we need to talk a little bit about programming for the web browser. That way we can make programs that do things so we can really try things out. And see how little pieces fit into something complete.
Second, I’d like to start having you write the little snippets to work out the concepts. Of course, I am not sure how to make the mechanics of this work. It would be easier if I could recommend people write them in JSBin or something like that – but without a debuggers it’s harder. Plus since Canvas peer review isn’t working…
Third, I’m having a hard time thinking of “bigger” programming assignments that are interesting enough and pedagogical enough.
What this means:
I am not going to change Reading 4 (due Monday, Oct 5). I want you to read it and we’ll use the existing discussion mechanism. But after this, we’ll slow down the readings a bit to let people digest it.
In class Tuesday, and (for the next reading) we’ll talk about how web pages work in the web browser, and how we manipulate them from JavaScript. This will let us write some more interesting programs.
After class Tuesday, I am going to start assigning smallish “programming puzzles” – these will be little programs for you to try writing. The idea is that if you’re not getting it after a short amount of time, you should “cheat” and look at a solution. Rather than trying peer review, maybe we’ll try using a discussion – so you can post a link to your program (whether it works or not). If you say “I’m stumped someone please help” maybe a classmate will be able to help you (figuring out other people’s bugs is good practice).
Hopefully, these programs won’t be too hard to write (less than an hour) – so if they are boring, it won’t matter as much. Later in the semester, I want to ask people to write more interesting things.
Thanks again for bearing with the experiments.
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