Retro

[gitstua]

Retro

In the spirit of transparency I am adding a retro here with how to improve this content

What went well? 😄

1. The students were very engaged
2. Students seemed to learn new skills together and helped each other
3. Everyone was on the wifi (or a hotspot)
4. Almost everyone had a GitHub Account setup
5. Great to have the snake game as a stretch goal
6. The aka.ms link made it easy to get setup
7. It was good to have several of us to help support attendees - there were times we were all at a different table helping
8. Demo of GitHub Copilot by Kitty was a great intro to using AI to simplify the hard stuff and focus on the content

What went not so well? 🤔

1. Some people had issues with incorrect email addresses during GitHub registration
2. Although the code snippets show a copy button in my browser most people did not see this
3. Fork was a tough concept to explain
4. Small screens on student devices made copying and pasting content hard
5. Small screens on student devices were hard to see when supporting students
6. A few people fell behind in the content so it was hard to catchup

How can we improve? 🚀

1. More demos of each step to bring everyone up to speed
2. Consider breaking up content into multiple docs
3. Consider having solutions in a folder for each major step (1 - code copied, 2 - answers updated, 3 - snake game working)
4. Put code is gists and refer to the raw version from aka.ms links (or maybe just a raw link to files in another branch?)
5. Have a few printed copies of the instructions on each table

[waiholiu]

Went well

1. Students were happy at the end to do their own exploration
2. Students understood most of the assignments and for stuff they didn't understand, were able to get help
3. Most students finished the assignment
4. Everyone arrived with github accounts

Did not go well

1. Students at times were not sure what next steps were
2. Some confusion around deploying to Github Pages and viewing the page via Live Server

How to improve

1. Print out the instructions - hard to read the instructions and do coding at the same time on a laptop screen. Cut and pasted code can just be put into gists and we have aka.ms links in the instructions
2. Have copilot enabled and add an element of coding with AI (maybe have the questions ask the AI to add or even fix questions)
3. Have github classroom prepared so we can utilise that

[KittyChiu]

Went well

1. Students all came with github user handles
2. Students were brilliant, the teachers were engaged, students were actually helping each other (fantastic)
3. Seating arrangement was easy for coaches to move around
4. Codespaces work on Chromebook browser ( I am still in awe )
5. Sufficient number of coaches
6. The coding activity was appropriate, I think there was a dopamine hit
7. GitHub stickers were all gone, students love them

Improvement opps

1. Better navigation of instruction, it was one long webpage, a navigation bar on the side would be helpful
2. Copy and paste (press SHIFT and drag the cursor) code was hard for students with long webpage
3. Show a demo before students embarking on the activity
4. Have students/teachers show&tell their work at the end