Planning notes

[cameronmcefee]

Here are the notes about this lesson that I took in the meeting. Let me know if I should add anything.

Tech:

• Pixel editor: Pickle
• Text editor: Sublime
• Library: Enchant.js
• Browse: Chrome

Duties:

• Write lessons: @kneath
• Teach lessons: @kneath
• Come up with pixel assets: @broccolini @cameronmcefee
• Figure out an autosave/autorefresh solution: @KartikTalwar
• Other mentors: Once we have lessons, test and modify them for examples.

Lesson schedule:

• 10:00am–11:00am: Setup, introductions, lesson
• 11:00am–11:15am: Break
• 11:15am–12:00pm: Lesson
• 12:00pm–12:30pm: Lunch, talk about professional stuff, guest speakers
• 12:30pm–1:30pm: Free time, customize, ask mentors about unrelated stuff

Lesson Dates:

• June 22nd, 10:00am–1:30pm
• June 29th, 10:00am–1:30pm
• July 6th, 10:00am–1:30pm
• July 13th, 10:00am–1:30pm
• July 20th, 10:00am–1:30pm
• July 27th, 10:00am–1:30pm

[cameronmcefee]

I'm terrible at delegating, so if there are obvious tasks I can open up for people, let me know.

[cameronmcefee]

@KartikTalwar You mentioned the idea of coming up with a list of goals the advanced kids could work towards, stuff that they'd have to figure out themselves. Did you want to make that list? Once @kneath has some lessons for us, we could potentially have other mentors work on coming up with quick ways to implement the "extra" ideas so mentors have a easy place to start if one of the kids gets interested but doesn't know how to do it.

[KartikTalwar]

Couple more additions:

• Students using GitHub (legal issues) - @cameronmcefee
• Possibility of getting software licenses from SublimeText @KartikTalwar?
  • Are we capping the attendance for the 6 weeks?
  • Their faq page sort of hints the posible nature of their response
• A very basic route/guideline for handling students who want to do their own thing (not necessarily game dev) - @KartikTalwar
• Seeking other mentors and parent involvement - @cameronmcefee?

One thing that I just noticed here with the proposed schedule is when you compare it to the preview 12-2 lesson, the time allocation for teaching is very much the same. I believe that was the motivation (time not being enough) for increasing the hours to 3. I was under the impression that the free time was after 3 hours (30 minutes if not an hour) where you'd be talking to parents or helping others in general (like the old format). I realize that this does demand more time commitment from the mentors but I think we should either ensure that the lessons would finish under 2 hours or reallocate the time.

W.R.T. coming up with additional goals for advanced students, I'd be more than happy to take over that. This might tie in nicely with the 3rd point mentioned above

[KartikTalwar]

• Creating lessons (READMEs) - @KartikTalwar

[cameronmcefee]

@KartikTalwar Are you still planing help with the autorefresh setup?

[KartikTalwar]

@cameronmcefee yessir. I will be doing a walkthrough after the installation to enable the setting

[cameronmcefee]

Sweet deal.

[broccolini]

Have any of the other dojo's got some sort of forum for the kids to connect in between classes? Seems like would be rad for them to be able to share ideas with each other and ask mentor questions between classes.

[cameronmcefee]

That sort of thing is tricky. First of all, there's the COPPA issue. We're working on taking care of that for GitHub and it's definitely non-trivial. Beyond that, there's the whole notion that parents care a lot about what their kids are exposed to. Any forum for connecting that we would potentially provide needs to be moderated, since we'll be liable for anything that happens there. If someone is interested in pursuing something like this, they are more than welcome to, but it's a much larger challenge than I'm prepared to push forward myself.

[broccolini]

@cameronmcefee fair enough. I thought that it might be logistically difficult. I was wondering if there was something already being used by the other dojo's. I don't have time at the moment to take on the work to set it up, maybe in the future.

[cameronmcefee]

@broccolini I haven't heard of anything specific being used by other dojos. Outside of the US it's less of a problem, but the COPPA stuff is a bit of a hurdle for any US based dojos wanting to build something like this. It's not insurmountable, but it's definitely non-trivial.

[cameronmcefee]

Closing this down since we've officially finished. Feedback can be left in #15