It was a great lineup! And now almost all of the talks are online:
My next action-item is to get all of the speakers and participants to join this group, so that we can discuss ideas like "best practices" here.
Someone actually asked that question, and we had a bit of discussion. I think the consensus was that there are a lot of great ideas, but not all of them work in all situations. Some of them are obvious, and some aren't so obvious. Brian mentioned some. Here are some other ideas:
1) Use notebooks instead of powerpoint slides. Make the students do presentations with notebooks.
2) Have the students turn in notebooks, and especially encourage them to write---write about the code and write about inspiration. Have them write personally.
3) Use a server if you can (JupyterHub, Sage Math Cloud, etc.) This can be a form of equity to make sure that everyone has the same computing resources.
4) Use many of the available meta-commands/magics. Such as the %activity magic in metakernel that gives you clicker-like (audience participation) functionality. Also, magics like %%tutor to connect to the online Python Tutor. There is also a %%jigsaw magic that allows you to code using Blockly (drag and drop blocks) in the notebook, then convert to Java or Python, or run directly.
5) Use nbgrader, if only to distribute or collect files.
6) Every once in while, start class with a completely blank notebook. Prepared notebooks are great, but blank ones are better for the student. The pace is slower, and you can see the code get built, decisions made, mistakes made, try variations, etc.
7) You may want to re-think (completely) courses that you have taught before. Notebooks make a big difference in pedagogy.
8) Use the browser-based terminal when it makes sense.
9) Develop your own pedagogical notebook style. We saw some very different approaches to the same materials.
10) I just added a drawing annotation overlay extension that allows you to free-hand annotate/draw on a notebook. Haven't tried it in class yet, but I have wished I could. It is just a temp drawing canvas that goes away when done (for now). Also the needed spelling checker:
11) Think about POGIL ideas. These are a perfect match for the notebook:
That's it for now... more later! Good luck, and please feel free to ask about any of these ideas, or the presentations.
-Doug