Educational material

[peterbrittain]

This project is supposed to be an introduction to programming and so should provide some additional material/documentation. Simple question: what should we provide?

I reckon we need:

• A basic user guide - providing installation, conga creation and messaging.
• An admin guide - for server setup and basic admin tasks.
• A teacher's guide - to explain how it all works, background reading (e.g. tutorials on technology used), possible tasks/extensions and sample code for some of them.

Sound about right?

[peterbrittain]

At the meeting, I think we agreed Neil would run with documentation.

[peterbrittain]

To help Neil write the docs, I think we should add ideas to the wiki for ways to extend/change what we've implemented. The idea is that this helps people explore the code through a range of tasks from newbie through to expert level.

I've added https://github.com/neilcollins/piconga/wiki/Coding-challenges to track any such ideas.

[peterbrittain]

I've (finally) managed to get an EC2 server installed with CentOS 6 and all the necessary software (postgres, apache and mod_wsgi) to run a basic production server. See Server Install for details.

Note that this still only serves up content over http (on port 80 as the current instructions stand) and had to disable SELinux to avoid permissions hell, but it is now using proper enterprise grade servers and should restart everything after a reboot.

[Luck8]

Hi, Just wondering what the status of this project is and what I can do to help? I think I'm qualified to put my hand up for most tasks...

[peterbrittain]

Hi @Luck8. This project is still live and we're gearing up for a first demo/live run this week! Did you post to this trail because you think you can best contribute to the documentation/educational side of things, or are you looking for some programming work to do?

[Luck8]

Hi Peter,

My preference is to do programming, but happy to work on documentation as well.

Regards,

Andreas

From: peterbrittain [mailto:notifications@github.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 11 December 2013 10:30 p.m.
To: neilcollins/piconga
Cc: Luck8
Subject: Re: [piconga] Educational material (#12)

Hi @Luck8 https://github.com/Luck8 . This project is still live and we're gearing up for a first demo/live run this week! Did you post to this trail because you think you can best contribute to the documentation/educational side of things, or are you looking for some programming work to do?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #12 (comment) . https://github.com/notifications/beacon/joqXYP13seTW5t1-AfjykjMQIY7uCj8HGh-W7KtN9mxN54ftniOxs6pLyvC7zozs.gif

[Luck8]

Enclosed is my CV.

With best wishes,

Andreas

From: Andreas N. Hagen [mailto:andreas.hagen@vodafone.co.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, 11 December 2013 10:31 p.m.
To: 'neilcollins/piconga'; 'neilcollins/piconga'
Subject: RE: [piconga] Educational material (#12)

Hi Peter,

My preference is to do programming, but happy to work on documentation as well.

Regards,

Andreas

From: peterbrittain [mailto:notifications@github.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 11 December 2013 10:30 p.m.
To: neilcollins/piconga
Cc: Luck8
Subject: Re: [piconga] Educational material (#12)

Hi @Luck8 https://github.com/Luck8 . This project is still live and we're gearing up for a first demo/live run this week! Did you post to this trail because you think you can best contribute to the documentation/educational side of things, or are you looking for some programming work to do?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #12 (comment) . https://github.com/notifications/beacon/joqXYP13seTW5t1-AfjykjMQIY7uCj8HGh-W7KtN9mxN54ftniOxs6pLyvC7zozs.gif

[peterbrittain]

Not that I can see! I suspect that you're using the email reply and github is stripping any attachments...

[Luck8]

Ok thanks, do you have alternate email address I can send to or alternatively some task to get me started?

Regards,

Andreas

From: peterbrittain [mailto:notifications@github.com]
Sent: Thursday, 12 December 2013 1:48 a.m.
To: neilcollins/piconga
Cc: Luck8
Subject: Re: [piconga] Educational material (#12)

Not that I can see! I suspect that you're using the email reply and github is stripping any attachments...

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #12 (comment) . https://github.com/notifications/beacon/joqXYP13seTW5t1-AfjykjMQIY7uCj8HGh-W7KtN9mxN54ftniOxs6pLyvC7zozs.gif

[peterbrittain]

OK - if you're already familiar with Python you could try setting up the client and development server then try one of the suggested easter eggs (#10) or possibly writing the code to make one of the coding challenges (https://github.com/neilcollins/piconga/wiki/Coding-challenges) possible. If you go for the latter, I'd suggest trying to get the scratch module integrated and then make it possible to start a scratch session once you've created/joined a conga. The final step is to comment out the scratch menu so that students have to find and uncomment the code to complete the (simple) challenge. They can then lok at more complex challenges involving using the scratch system.