SF experience with Quil app?

[Bridget Hillyer]

Does anyone know how things went with the new beginner Quil app at the last SF workshop?

[David Chambers]

We didn't start the Quil app until late in the day on Saturday. Here are my thoughts:

  - The fact that it did not tie into the earlier material was okay.

  - Writing code which produced visual output was a welcome change of pace. By this point in the day some students were speaking of information overload, but were energized by the strikingly different output.

  - Changing the parameters changes the output, so students could modify their programs and compare the results. This was fun.

  - My concern at the weirdness of a "set-stroke" function which modifies hidden state turned out not to be an issue, based on my interactions with students. Students were excited about getting the app to work then making changes to it, which didn't require full understanding of the code.

  - I can see value in introducing the drawing API earlier in the curriculum, particularly if the REPL can display a shape as output.

Buro, Josh, and Anthony presented the material, so may have different perspectives.

On 31 October 2014 10:11, Bridget Hillyer <bridget...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anyone know how things went with the new beginner Quil app at the last SF workshop?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "clojurebridge-curriculum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojurebridge-curr...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurebridge-curriculum.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Katherine Fellows]

+1 to all above, although I'll also add that at least a couple of folks were confused by the "Usage" section in the README vs. the "Making Your First Program with Quil" page that the README links to.

This was less a problem with the app itself, and more confusion surrounding the directions given in the workshop. Some attendees were cloning the repo and following the "Usage" directions, while others were following the "Making Your First Program with Quil" directions, and thus writing the app from scratch. This resulted in some of the attendees having projects that looked slightly different from what was being shown on the projector, then not being able to debug quickly enough to keep their interest. A couple just sort-of went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after a while and watched what the instructors were doing, vs. typing anything themselves.

I'm pretty sure this was a case of no one having used the app in a workshop before--and thus, instructors, TAs, and students all having varying ideas of what was supposed to be going on--but perhaps we should adjust the verbiage about which directions folks should be following in-workshop.

--

kf

[Bhaskar Mookerji]

+2, also kf's interpretation as to the source of the confusion is correct.

There were separate sessions, one for beginners and Anthony's discussion seminar with the more experienced folks. In the first one, I and (???) were demoing the app, and I spent some time walking through the example source in the git repo. Someone mentioned that the goal was actually to create the app from scratch, and not modify the example source with new code. There was a bit of confusion at that point (from both instructors and students), but we then decided to head to Thirsty Bear since it was the end of the day anyway. 

I think a coherent, project-based Quil app spread through the day would be lovely, both because (i) students would find the examples compelling/relevant, and (ii) project-based learning experiences (similar to that in a university setting) typically need to be spread out over out several hours. By 4-5PM, most students are probably ready to wind down since they've been exposed to a lot of new information. 

- Buro

[Bridget Hillyer]

Thanks, Buro, Katherine, and David, for the feedback. I'm going to call that enough of a success that it is worth encouraging future workshops to use the Quil capstone app. I think the confusion about how to teach it - start from scratch instead of starting with the existing code - can be solved easily by changing the link in the main curriculum. I'll create an issue for incorporating Quil into the rest of the curriculum.

On Monday, November 3, 2014 12:23:37 AM UTC-5, Bhaskar Mookerji wrote:

+2, also kf's interpretation as to the source of the confusion is correct.

There were separate sessions, one for beginners and Anthony's discussion seminar with the more experienced folks. In the first one, I and (???) were demoing the app, and I spent some time walking through the example source in the git repo. Someone mentioned that the goal was actually to create the app from scratch, and not modify the example source with new code. There was a bit of confusion at that point (from both instructors and students), but we then decided to head to Thirsty Bear since it was the end of the day anyway. 

I think a coherent, project-based Quil app spread through the day would be lovely, both because (i) students would find the examples compelling/relevant, and (ii) project-based learning experiences (similar to that in a university setting) typically need to be spread out over out several hours. By 4-5PM, most students are probably ready to wind down since they've been exposed to a lot of new information. 

- Buro

On Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 1:17 AM, Katherine Fellows <k...@kpf.me> wrote:

+1 to all above, although I'll also add that at least a couple of folks were confused by the "Usage" section in the README vs. the "Making Your First Program with Quil" page that the README links to.

This was less a problem with the app itself, and more confusion surrounding the directions given in the workshop. Some attendees were cloning the repo and following the "Usage" directions, while others were following the "Making Your First Program with Quil" directions, and thus writing the app from scratch. This resulted in some of the attendees having projects that looked slightly different from what was being shown on the projector, then not being able to debug quickly enough to keep their interest. A couple just sort-of went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after a while and watched what the instructors were doing, vs. typing anything themselves.

I'm pretty sure this was a case of no one having used the app in a workshop before--and thus, instructors, TAs, and students all having varying ideas of what was supposed to be going on--but perhaps we should adjust the verbiage about which directions folks should be following in-workshop.

--

kf

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 11:34 AM, David Chambers <d...@davidchambers.me> wrote:

We didn't start the Quil app until late in the day on Saturday. Here are my thoughts:

  - The fact that it did not tie into the earlier material was okay.

  - Writing code which produced visual output was a welcome change of pace. By this point in the day some students were speaking of information overload, but were energized by the strikingly different output.

  - Changing the parameters changes the output, so students could modify their programs and compare the results. This was fun.

  - My concern at the weirdness of a "set-stroke" function which modifies hidden state turned out not to be an issue, based on my interactions with students. Students were excited about getting the app to work then making changes to it, which didn't require full understanding of the code.

  - I can see value in introducing the drawing API earlier in the curriculum, particularly if the REPL can display a shape as output.

Buro, Josh, and Anthony presented the material, so may have different perspectives.

On 31 October 2014 10:11, Bridget Hillyer <bridget...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anyone know how things went with the new beginner Quil app at the last SF workshop?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "clojurebridge-curriculum" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojurebridge-curriculum+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojurebridge-curriculum.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "clojurebridge-curriculum" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojurebridge-curriculum+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

[Bridget Hillyer]

On Monday, November 3, 2014 7:46:41 PM UTC-5, Bridget Hillyer wrote:

Thanks, Buro, Katherine, and David, for the feedback. I'm going to call that enough of a success that it is worth encouraging future workshops to use the Quil capstone app. I think the confusion about how to teach it - start from scratch instead of starting with the existing code - can be solved easily by changing the link in the main curriculum. I'll create an issue for incorporating Quil into the rest of the curriculum

Here's the issue if anyone would like to work it:

https://github.com/ClojureBridge/curriculum/issues/115