Add teacher guide to prompt instructors

[raorao]

The original issues for each release included a fair amount of advice for teachers -- but that information did not translate into text. May make sense to add a for the instructor section to each release, or a teacher guide document that they can peruse separately.

[avh4]

I sent some emails to the volunteers / instructors. The tips in here might be good to include in the teacher / TA guide:

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We ask everyone to arrive by 9am, though we will be opening the doors to students at 8:30am. Between 8:30-9:30, everyone will simultaneously be having breakfast and verifying and helping all the students install Elm. So make sure you're familiar with the installation instructions here https://raorao.gitbooks.io/elmbridge-curriculum/content/#installing-elm

After breakfast, we'll be doing a short welcome talk as a large group, then will split the students into three smaller groups for the rest of the morning.

Tips for TAs (for the morning):

• Go through the "Getting Started" (Elm REPL) section and make sure you understand what's going on https://raorao.gitbooks.io/elmbridge-curriculum/content/Getting%20Started.html
• Make sure you've tried our cloning and running the elm-basics exercises (Step 1 of https://raorao.gitbooks.io/elmbridge-curriculum/content/The%20Basic%20Building%20Blocks%20of%20Elm.html )
• Remember that documentation about the operators in Elm can be found in the "Basics" module. To get there, go to http://package.elm-lang.org/ -> "core" -> "Basics"
• In addition to the Basics module, be prepared to direct students to the List and String module documentation pages (also in the core package).

Tips for instructors (for the morning):

• Start the morning by having everyone introduce themselves (people are more likely to ask questions if they are invited to speak early in the class)
• The key points for introducing Elm are:
  • immutable data
  • types
  • (See https://raorao.gitbooks.io/elmbridge-curriculum/content/Why%20Elm.html for Rao's thoughts on how to introduce Elm)
• The key points to hit in the REPL section are:
  • Literal numbers and strings
  • Some binary operators (+, -, *, /)
  • String concatenation with ++
  • Calling functions (like toString, min, round)
  • Calling functions from other modules (like String.toUpper)
  • Defining named functions
• The key points to hit in the morning exercises section are:
  • Using parentheses to nest expressions (eg, String.toUpper (String.left 1 word))
  • if/else expressions
  • Boolean operators/functions (==, /=, ||, &&, not)
  • Anonymous functions and passing functions as arguments
  • Syntax for creating/updating records

We'll be sending tips about the remaining parts of the workshop in the coming days.

And if you want to read more about creating a great learning environment, there're lots of good suggestions here: http://docs.railsbridge.org/workshop/more_teacher_training

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We'll be having lunch from 12:30-1:30, and are expecting that the students will be finishing up the elm-basics exercises around then (though it's totally find if things go faster or slower than that).

The next section introduces The Elm Architecture by having the students download and build a hello-world app and look through it, and then download the starting point for the elmoji-translator project and start adding to it. https://raorao.gitbooks.io/elmbridge-curriculum/content/The%20Elm%20Architecture.html

Tips for all volunteers:

• Remember to remind people that being confused is normal, and Mistakes == Learning!
• Explicitly encourage students to try to answer each other's questions
• Good responses to questions: "I'm glad you asked!" or "I actually wondered that, too." or "Great question!"
• Also try to ask students questions as a first response, like "Well, what do you think we should try first?" or "How would you do this in (whatever language they're familiar with)?"
• Don't be surprised when someone hasn't heard of something before.
• Don't grab anyone's keyboard. Avoid taking over unless you think it's really necessary. Ask before you do. "Mind if I drive for a sec?" But really, don't.
• You can say the same thing THREE TIMES and it will not be boring yet.
• When you ask a question, wait TEN WHOLE SECONDS before saying anything else. People need time to think.
• If you want more ideas, see the RailsBridge volunteer training slides: http://docs.railsbridge.org/workshop/more_teacher_training#discussion_technical_capability

Tips for instructors:

• The afternoon project is written to allow the students to read through and follow along at their own pace, but if it feels appropriate in your class to give more explicit guidance and explanations, feel free to do so
• pay attention to the room and if there are any common questions that come up, give short explanations and/or demos to the class
• key points to cover:
  • using elm-make and elm-reactor
  • the "triad" of model, view, update
  • when making a change, get in the habit of thinking "does the model need to change?", "does the view need to change?", "does update need to change?"

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Here are a few final tips:

• Help students learn how to learn: (for example, if someone asks about what a function does, first show them how to find the documentation for it and let them read that before answering their question.)
• There's a possibility someone with an old OS/browser might not be able to see emojis; if anyone runs into that, have them try a non-Chrome browser, or show them that they can replace the emojis with other letters/characters at the bottom of EmojiConverter.elm.
• The DNS DDoS might still be going on tomorrow; if so, you can get github working again by configuring the computer's network to use OpenDNS (instructions are at http://208.69.38.205/ )