Teaching

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====== TA notes ======
===== Day 7 Recap =====
- people are not doing his blog, nor are their projects on github. If they're so great, they should be acing all the assignments. I'll talk to him.

- I rearranged the groups a little 

- Afternoon Groups: (Olivia, Caelen, Nidhi), (Rohan, Jon), (Joyce, Neel), (Jonathan, Christine), (Rahul,Tony), (Jerry, Sindhu, Akane), (Maxine, Vrinda, Jannani)

- yay field trip tomorrow? :)

- the next day we'll be doing A* search, with heavy review of Objects and Shortest Path. 

- any other feedback?

===== Day 6 recap =====

Feedback on groups?

Afternoon Groups: (Olivia, Caelen, Nidhi), (Rohan, Jon), (Joyce, Neel), (Jonathan, Christine), (Rahul, Jannani), (Jerry, Sindhu, Akane), (Maxine, Vrinda, Tony)

QUESTION: Should I permanently keep Jon and Rohan together?

-----

Feel free to email me, if you feel stuck during lab. I realized that there is a problem with variable names in Processing.js. These are problems I can solve quickly. This was pretty minor though.

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Tomorrow we are doing adjacency matrices.

===== Day 6 notes =====

Here's the starter for sorting animation.

The for loop has to move into the draw loop! I'll do it in class.

Let me know how things are going for you both. We should have a meeting sometime, but I can't imagine when we'd all have free time together.

<code java>

int cheesesticks [] = {21, 33, 44, 22 ,55 ,66 ,77, 33, 22, 11, 44, 33, 22, 11, 55 ,66, 5, 2, 100, 20};


void setup () {
  
  size (500,500);
/*  for (int i=0; i<20; i++) {
    int min = cheesesticks[i];
    for (int j=i+1; j<20; j++) {
      if (cheesesticks[j]<min) {
        min = cheesesticks[j];
        int temp = cheesesticks[i];
        cheesesticks[i] = cheesesticks[j];
        cheesesticks[j] = temp;
      }
    }
    println(min);
  }
  
  for (int i=0; i<20; i++)
    println(cheesesticks[i]);
 */   
}

void draw () {
  
  fill (0,255,0);
  for (int i=0; i<20; i++)
  {
    rect(0, i*20, cheesesticks[i]*5, 10);
  }
}

</code>

===== Day 5 recap =====


Can you encourage those who think there are too many topics or anything negative, that this is Stanford and they should realize that they're coming here for a challenge.

Some of them sound a little bit entitled.

I'm doing the best I can to readjust. 

  - from the survey feedback, it seems like about 2 students have not the best attitude. 2 responses I got about the guest lecture was that he was monotone and uninteresting. Please encourage the students to step up to the challenges...
  - with that said, I did create this course to be an easier version of my AI course last year. Unfortunately, I think it needs to be more like a harder version of my middle school robotics course. Adjustments are being made now. These students are not as independent.
  - Final Project topics are up: http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~sherol/teaching/doku.php?id=spcs:summer2014:final_projects
  -  I'd still like to see Roster notes in the doc. I'm not giving them the opportunity to give anonymous qualitative feedback anymore. PLEASE encourage students to email me, if there are issues. 
 
Finally, let me know if you need anything from me. Or if you have concerns!

I'm deciding to stay within Processing, so no more foreseeable new languages. 

When you two get a chance. Break out the kit and take a look.

I'm just using the book in the box.

===== Day 5 notes =====

Today went fantastic!!

  - Help them along with their Design Docs for the Mousey Cheese sorting program.
  - Make sure things all make it onto Github
  - Make sure they fill out the: 
SPCS: Anonymous First Week Assessment

===== DAy 4 Recap =====

Can I get an update on the lab today? There's not much info on the spreadsheet.

I encourage you to see the guest speaker tomorrow, but dont feel like you have to.

Before Monday (over the weekend), can you check with each student to see how they're doing?


===== Day 4 - notes =====

During lab, please have the students install processing first thing. The download is big.

Encourage the students to teach themselves coding. They shouldn't just be copying code without trying to learn what's going on.

Try making your own small processing program and turning it into a Processing.js page.


===== Day 3 - Recap =====

Today was a bit rough for me...

  * The main thing in the feedback was that they felt rushed during lab, I think that that's my fault for not enforcing the "you don't have to finish everything policy".
  * Here's the updated lab policy. People do not need to finish. They can skip around, but try to look at every assignment. Stick with the ones that sound the most interesting. Don't feel bad for not finishing.

Tomorrow, we are starting Processing.js

The assignment should be up now.

===== Day 3 - notes =====

  * Objective: getting COLLABORATORS on yesterday's projects
  * They'll need to install the Twine program. I briefly showed it to them.
  * Hopefully, there is Power Point, b/c they need to do vector diagrams
  * I would prefer they try each of the assignments, but it's ok to spend less time on what is less interesting. Help them budget their time.
  * thank you x 100000!, Julie! You are amazing. Things went great!
===== Day 2 - recap =====

  - Things went much smoother in regards to the feedback
  - You two are raking in the gold stars!
  - There's one student who seems to not be having a good time, who do you think is the one with the bad attitude? What can we do to help?
  - FROM NOW ON: In your Student Roster Feedback, can you indicate Gold Stars? You can put a Star by the sentence.
  - We will debrief the lock activity tomorrow at 11:00. I don't want to hype it up though. Come if you want.
  - Objective Tomorrow: They arent setting their partners as collaborators. The should.

===== Day 2 - notes =====


- Again, Week 1 is the roughest. Day 1 is the most stressful (for me atleast... lol). The rest of class will be smooth sailing. Especially Session 2.

- Remember, you both can take the morning off (but do look at Assignment Day 2). Just help them not get lost (remind them on a map or something). Or walk them if you want to. You can also feel free to sit in my lecture as a study hall, I won't bother you at all. (Again, you can look at the assignments from anywhere!.. in your PJs in bed, if you want)

- I'm giving a pep talk first thing in class. We're going to watch a TED talk (6 min) about grit and perseverance. I can't really slow down the class too much more. There will always be too much work, because of the advanced students. It's ok if they don't finish.

- I got a Windows laptop from the office and will try to get a github/JS tutorial this morn down for them. That may or may not happen.

- The teams are mostly boy/girl. I don't really know them yet, but they seem a little less mature than the AI class was. They need to tough it out and work in groups. Sometimes these are learning opportunities for them, but I also don't want them to be miserable. Let me know how the boy/girl thing goes. I really like how you've gotten to know each of the students.

- There's a surprise lock activity this afternoon!

- The assignment is straightforward. Gh-pages = priority. 

===== Day 1 Recap =====

  * Good Work! Today is the hardest.
  * Where are the combo locks?
  * I'm swapping your students around because I meant to sort them by first name. Sorry about that! (This is in the Google Doc spread sheet!)
  * The feedback is pretty on point. The lecture was great all around. The lab is about 50% think it's great/easy. 25% think it's challenging and 25% think it's too difficult. These courses are very advanced, and I can't slow it down too much. I'll to adjust the best I can.
  * My biggest concern is whether we need a third TA. Although, we also need to encourage the students to help each other and to be willing to look up the answer themselves. The book is not elementary, but one or two students seemed unwilling to take on the challenge of working through it themselves. Most others seemed ok (from the feedback). This isn't a spoonfeeding kind of course.
  * For example, I kept saying that gh-pages was going to be a challenge. We can't rely on technology to always work in our favor. I would have been able to check on gh-pages myself if the computers worked last night. I could really use your help on double checking the assignments and just looking ahead at the materials.
  * Objective: get gh-pages working. I'll work on getting them acclimated to the challenges. 
  * Take a look at these teams, what do you think?
    * Afternoon Teams: (Tony, Vrinda), (Akane, Jon), (Nidhi, Rohan), (Jerry, Maxine), (Caelen, Neel), (Christine, Jonathan), (Joyce, Maxine), (Rahul, Sindhu, Jannani)


===== Day 1 Notes =====

This is the toughest day!

  * Try to see if you can work through assignment 1. I sent you the source code for it in an email. I care more about them learning how to get github to work.
  * I split the students in half. Julie gets the first half, Peter gets the second. Just make sure you check in on these students, but feel free to comment on ANY student. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uOWxo9vHNWy08CWbEFI4PYRxJPZAL_5-lK_Mo6UDk8/edit#gid=0
  * I like you both to come to the first class tomorrow, but you don't have to come to any of the other ones. Maybe come for guest speakers, etc.


===== 6/19 - Thursday =====

  * Eval Form and Gold Stars
  * Teams
  * Field trips

===== 6/18 - Wednesday =====

  * Google hangout meeting tomorrow night at 10 pm
  * Check out the course website: [[http://spcs.sherolchen.com|spcs.sherolchen.com]]
  * Check out the TA notes website: [[http://ta.sherolchen.com|ta.sherolchen.com]]
  * Check out the first set of assignments! http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~sherol/teaching/doku.php?id=spcs:summer2014:day_1
  * Try to get the mathquiz program running online. It should look like this. I will email you the source files.
    * http://ffpaladin.github.io/mathquiz/
Teaching

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