On the Value of Learning About Your Students

I was reading What I Am Learning About My Students During an Impossible Semester by Jim Lang after searching for a value related assignment to restart my classes as we go back to work online while @home during the COVID19 #StayHomeSaveLives event. It was worth reading before I get going today, frames how I want to approach restarting, at least to try.

What I intend to attempt is to ask this question, framed for this time:

“What are you good at in school?” I asked. “What do you care about in terms of your academic work? Do you love to participate in class? Are you a good leader on group projects? This is an English class, but maybe your strength is with statistics or math. If so, tell me about it. If I know about what you’re good at, maybe we can find a way for you to use it in this course.”

https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2328-what-i-am-learning-about-my-students-during-an-impossible-semester?cid=VTEVPMSED1

Could be reframed for a full start as:

What are you good at in school? What do you care about in terms of your academic work? Do you love to participate in class? Are you a good leader on group projects? This is an Computer Science class, but maybe your strength is with English or Choir. If so, tell me about it. If I know about what you’re good at, maybe we can find a way for you to use it in this course.

But for a Q4 restart as:

OPTIONAL: What have you found you are good at during the #StayHomeSaveLives event? What do you care about in terms of your academic work and future? What values do you think are important for people to show during this situation?

Free Online Programming & Computer Science Courses You Can Start in April

Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central compiled this list of over 515 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, he leveraged Class Central’s database of over 7,000 courses.  https://medium.freecodecamp.com/515-free-online-programming-computer-science-courses-you-can-start-in-april-8b0ce1817d61

Class Central

Class-central’s landing page.

These courses are sorted based on their difficulty level:

  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced

Many of these courses are completely self-paced. The rest will start at various times later this month. You can find complete lists of the technology-related courses starting later in 2017 on our Computer Science and Programming subject pages.

Introducing an on-demand course in GitHub basics

from GitHub

If you’d like to start using GitHub or just see what it’s all about, we’re kicking off a new way for you to learn the basics. Introduction to GitHub is a self-paced, online class designed to help you:

  • Get started using GitHub.com in 30 minutes or less.
  • Make new friends while collaborating on a fun project.
  • Dive into the worlds of GitHub and open source.

Unlike many self-paced training classes where you are completely alone, this one has a thrivingGitter community where GitHub Trainers drop in several times a day to answer questions and help those who are stuck. During the course, you are encouraged to complete an activity where you will drop a pin on our map representing your current location. Check out our current pinshere to see where people are learning.

This course is 100 percent free forever …