TL;DR - I’m teaching a class of High School Students in SF about Computer Science through projec based learning. Spinning up a few prototypes using Jekyll. Revisiting my own static website as a sanity check.

Context

I’m excited to help students learn more about technology and the inner workings behind the scenes. There is interest to learn more about Computer Science and we’ve brainstormed that making a website is a good starting point! Recently the student’s organization started a community garden so we are creating a website landing page for the project.

Manging the Learning Curve

Most of the students that are being mentored are jumping in to the technical world of computer science for the first time. This brings up foundational challenges:

• Parallelizing Execution: Git has been the main challenge of our team. We’ve spent time over VC setting up git environments for the students. Essentially verbally communicating commands to execute in terminal. Students feedback is that they do not feel like they are absorbing enough information.
• Technology Disconnect: There is a lot going on with Jekyll. We are altering files all over the place but they do not seem related in the grand scheme: Markdown files, yaml files, randomly putting html embedded. A seasoned programmer can connect the dots, but this might be too high of a learning curve given the student’s background and bandwidth.

Next Steps

• Tutorial Pivot: We are adopting freeCodeCamp’s Responsive Web Design Certification to close the gap on technical foundation. The goal is to get students comfortable with technical execution (editing tutorial code + running the embedded simulator). Hoping this will give students more immediate feedback and prompt questions for instructors.
• Deliverables Update: Instead of delivering an entire Jekyll Static Website, we are pivoting for each student to submit all the Responsive Web Design Projects.

Personal

• Reviving Blog: Quarantine sucks - trying to break the monotonous lull + days passing without me realizing. Dumping thoughts into this to keep me sane! Documenting learnings + Goal Progress and the like - let’s see how this rolls. Yolo merge this to master