Rails Bridge Curriculum notes

20141130_railsbridge_curriculum.md

Volunteer-Student interactions

• When doing introductions, have volunteers write the names of the student on the board? Spatially grouped by experience or background?

• Remind volunteers to ask students how it's going since they may not all raise their hands when they get stuck

Skill levels

• Use BridgeTroll to track/group students' skill levels.

• https://github.com/railsbridge/docs/wiki/Class-level-grouping-guide

Tracks

• How much experience is needed for each track?

• How long do they take?

  • Each contain enough to last all day

• How much flexibility should we offer?

  • Easiest to focus entirely on one: Intro to Rails
  • Can suggest others if people end up going fast
  • Could split off into a small group if people are interested

• Rails

  • Intro to Rails
    • Experience required: None
    • Uses scaffolds
    • Can be student-driven
  • Job Board
    • Experience required: Some experience with Rails, interested in learning more
    • Uses generators but not scaffolds
    • Should be guided by TA with time for discussion
    • Error-driven
    • Explains the request cycle
    • Routes
    • SQL
  • Intermediate Rails
    • Experience required: "Decently comfortable" with Rails
    • Challenge-driven
    • Requires the most TA direction w/Discussion
    • Covers adding Devise, Bootstrap
    • Most broad in terms of direction, really just requirements

• Frontend

  • Frontend
    • Experience required: None
    • Covers HTML, CSS, and JS (+ jQuery)
  • JS Snake Game
    • Experience required: Some JS
    • Could take a while to go through
    • Best for someone with experience

• Ruby

  • Learn To Code
    • Experience required: None
    • Topics
      • Computers
      • Types
      • IO
      • Conditionals
      • Loops
      • Arrays/Hashes
      • Sinatra
    • Probably less satisfying because you don't end up with a finished project
  • Ruby
    • Experience required: Some Ruby
    • More in-depth
    • Maybe just use tryruby.org instead?

Talks

• Some overlap between these

• Good basis for building on

• Foundational Skills

  • Basic terminal commands
  • Directories/file system (currently very Unix-centered)
  • Text editing
  • How Programming Languages work
  • Basic overview of hardware (CPU, memory, storage)
  • Role of Operating System
  • Package Managers
  • Version Control, Git

• Ruby for Beginners

  • Role of Operating System
  • Programming Language
  • Application vs Library vs Framework
  • Ruby on Rails, Gems
  • Interpreted vs Compiled Languages
  • Ruby
    • Variables
    • Types
      • Strings
      • Numbers
      • Collection
      • Methods
      • Boolean
      • Operators
      • Loop
      • Conditional
  • Running Ruby code
  • Hello World
  • ARGV
  • OOP
    • Class
    • Method
    • Variable
    • Instance
  • Projects
    • Personal Chef Lab
    • Encryptor Lab
    • Event Manager Lab
    • Testing

• Ruby for Programmers

  • Ruby philosophy
  • Versions of Ruby (should be updated)
  • irb
  • Comments
  • Implicit return
  • Line breaks
  • Parens
  • Variable declaration
  • String interpolation
  • Built-in types
  • Functions
  • Class/Methods
  • Bang/predicate method
  • Equality
  • Identifiers
  • Naming conventions
  • Variable scope
  • Messages
  • Requiring code