I am going to be out on maternity leave sometime in April - end of the year. I am wondering if it would be okay to switch units 4,5,&6 around so that they are working on the computers when I am gone and not with Adafruit. I would ideally like to do lesson 6,4 then 5 to ensure I am finished with lesson 6 before I go out. Has anyone that has taught this before done them out of order before? I am not sure if there is information they would need to know that wouldn’t be covered in this order. Any help is appreciated! Thank you!
You could do that, although it might make especially unit 5 appear to be a little anticlimactic as it introduces app lab (at least design mode) to the students. There is also quite a bit of unplugged material in those two units, so they may not exactly be working on the computers. Unit 6 is where they are in a largely plugged unit on the computers.
I am curious to see if any other teachers have done this or something similar and will jump in with suggestions. I haven’t done this, but off the top of my head, I wonder if you might want to try and time it so you can teach unit 5 first and at least start unit 6 so they know how to use the circuit boards while you are gone. Not sure I would want to leave the introduction of the circuit board to a sub unless I knew the sub and knew they would be ok with it, but you might be able to get them started on it to give them a taste of what is to come and then work on units 4 & 5 so when you left, they would already have some experience with the circuit boards.
I haven’t done this, though, so I’m kind of just thinking aloud… anyone else have suggestions?
Mike
My only thoughts are, 4 introduces a lot of the whys of app design. Who is the app for? How do I empathize with their needs? If you do 6 first, they wouldn’t go in with that background knowledge. At that point I’d recommend having the sub walk them back through their app creation from 6 but through the lens of empathy.
Glad to hear what other people think about this one, though.
–Michael K.