Hack Club Workshop Proposals

Initial proposals for Hack Club on how to improve the workshop content, and where I want to go with the curriculum.

Transcript

1. HACK CLUB: WORKSHOP REVAMP PROPSAL
2. CURRENT STATE
3. WORKSHOPS • 6 “track” workshops Personal Website Twilio Soccer Dodge Maze ajar.io • Community workshops THERE’S A BUNCH.
4. TRACK WORKSHOPS • Workshops are varying in quality • First three are highest quality ‣ Introduce new concepts • Next 3 restate concepts or are unfinished • 4/6 are game focused ‣ Not a great introduction into what CS can be
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS • There are a lot of them • Little to no track integration • Varying quality • Varying maintenance status • Don’t feel integrated with the rest of Hack Club
6. NEXT STEPS
7. Personal Website Twilio Soccer Dodge Maze Ajar.io INITIAL WORKSHOP CHANGES merge Not many new concepts, mostly another example of what was already taught. Unfinished, shouldn’t be considered for our official track until finished. Also doesn’t use previous game engine. Soccer and Dodge are essentially the same tutorial, just with different function calls. Twilio first provides a great dive into both practical things you can do with programming, and the more fun side, if you want. Good for wow- factor to hook people for second week. As part of second week, let’s the student create a presence on the internet, can be used to show off what they’ve done in the club.
8. WORKSHOP TIERS HACK CLUB: SANDBOX HACK CLUB: COMMUNITY HACK CLUB: CURRICULUM • Ideas, partially finished, etc. • Ideas may be unmaintained • Every workshop, including official/staff- made, starts in the sandbox • Encourages community to propose ideas • Encourages cross-club collaboration • Move Ajar.io and Maze here initially • Finished workshops • Meet a standard of quality, “endorsed” by Hack Club • Maintained by community • Can be “expansions” of topics in our official curriculum • As official curriculum evolves over time, curriculum workshops may be transferred to the community • Finished workshops • Meet highest standard of quality • Fits into our curricular plans • Actively maintained by staff • Will still have community involvement • What we’ll initially market to clubs to present and teach
9. CURRICULUM I’ll go into more detail about this later, but I want to create a new type of computer science curriculum that encourages more innovation. Lots of the curriculum available now, especially for young people, is focused around recreating what already exists, and being “the next Facebook” and all that. I want to create a more socially aware curriculum, that’s focused on creating solutions to problems that students might face, or things that could be optimized at their school, their community, or wherever else. I have nothing against Facebook, but I don’t think we should create a curriculum that just encourages creating more of the same, especially when these things are targeted towards those who are more privileged than others, and can afford to have these luxuries. I guess I’d sum it up as a “computer science for the greater good” curriculum. I know that bringing social issues into computer science is always something that ruffles feathers, but I think that it’s foolish to ignore these social issues, and if we want to encourage more people to embrace computer science, we can’t just keep creating more of the same. As an institution that might be someone’s first introduction to computer science, I think we can be a positive impact on the tech industry by producing people that are excited to create positive social change, and want to create something new, not just more of the same.
10. FEEDBACK? THANKS!