EBoard 02: Learning the ‘lab equipment’ (i.e., playing with Racket)

This class will be recorded! Its use is limited to members of the class. Please do not share with others.

Approximate overview

• Administrative stuff [10-15 min]
• Q&A [5-10 min]
• Reflection/Debrief [10 min]
• Break [5 min]
• Lab [55 min]
• Debrief (if time) (probably not)

Administrative stuff [10-15 min]

Notes and News

• Good afternoon (or whatever time of day it is for you)!
  I hope you had a good first day of Spring Term 1.
• Happy Ground Hog’s Day (or is it “Ground Hogs’ Day”?) (or “Ground Hogs Day”)
  • No, it is not a celebration of sausage.
  • I never get it straight: Is it “six weeks until spring” if the Ground Hog sees its shadow and “six weeks more winter” if it does not, or vice versa?
  • And does it matter?
• Accessibility/UDL:
  • I will try to remember to turn on captioning.
  • I will be running an Otter.ai transcript. I’ll paste the URL in the chat.
  • I will be posting the class recordings to a separate channel. (I hate seeing myself in class recordings.)
• I’ll do my best to remind you about upcoming work at the start of each class. (Althought not at this instant.)
  • Mini Projects are due on Monday evenings.
  • SoLAs are on Thursdays. (Wednesday review sessions might be good.)
  • Lab assignments daily
  • Reading responses daily
  • Quizzes daily
• We now have a GroupMe for the course. See the note in the Chat channel.
• See the note in the Announcements channel about mentor sessions.
• I was not thrilled with how Teams Breakout Rooms worked. We will be switching to another approach to see how that works.
• I’m experimenting with a new screen layout. Let me know if it’s better/worse to have me look to the side rather than up.
• I think I’ve set up good software for calling on you randomly. We shall see how well it works.
• Evening tutoring will be available 3-5 p.m. Sundays and 8-10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays in the tutoring channel on the CS team.
  • I’ve added all of you to the CS team.
  • There will also be in-person hours in Science 3813 and 3815.
  • During evening tutoring hours, you can also work in those rooms. We will soon have computers set up for pairing.
• If you have problems with Teams, please let me know and please report your issue at https://help.grinnell.edu.
• I apologize for the late class yesterday. I do my best to allow things to end by 4:30 p.m. CT. (Some labs may also go long, but you can leave and complete them another time.)

Upcoming activities

• CS Extras, 5pm, Thursday, 4 February, in Events Channel on CS Team.
• Town Hall on Strategic Planning, Noon, Monday, 8 February.
• Try out the campus Maker Space (well, the Satellite Maker Space)

Upcoming work

I’ll try to include this list of upcoming work each day.

• Lab writeup for today (due tomorrow at 3 p.m. CST)
  • Writeup
  • There’s an “auto grader” that will report potential problems.
• Readings for Wednesday’s class (responses due tomorrow at 2 p.m. CST)
  • Simple images in Racket
  • Decomposition
• Mini-project 1 (due Monday at 10:30 p.m. CST)
• First quiz is tomorrow. Focus on Scheme/Racket basics. (Today’s readings and lab.)

Attendance

• Our wonderful mentors will take attendance by looking at the the list of people here.
• Anyone who wasn’t here on Monday should introduce themselves using the not-yet-patented CSC-151 introduction algorithm.
  • “Hi, my name is ."
  • “I prefer that you call me <how you’d like to be addressed>.”
  • OPTIONAL: “My pronouns are ."
  • “If you must address me by last name, you should call me
  • “When I hear the word ‘snow’, I think of ."
  • “This term, I’m looking forward to ."
• Anyone who was here on Monday and isn’t here today should let me know. (And let me know if you are planning to drop the course.)

Q&A

Where can we find the class notes?

Two places.

From the schedule.

From the list of eboards, which are available on the handouts page.

Why does Racket say “circle is undefined”?

You need (require 2htdp/image) at the top.

Sorry for the confusion.

If that still doesn’t work, ask during lab.

Why can I not load the package?

Let’s look in lab.

Do I have to import every time?

Yes.

Consider setting up a template.

Reflection

Strange things that went wrong:

• Bag opened upside-down (and in such a way that we could not store future bread).
• Oil dripped all over the table.
• There was an unexpected seal on the nut butter.
• The jam jar had a pry-off lid rather than a twist-off lid.
• Sam needed band aids.

What are some important lessons from the process?

What are the basic tools in an algorithm designer’s toolkit? (There are approximately six.)

Let’s come up with examples from the Substance Butter and Fruit Spread algorithm.

Think/pair/share.

1. Sam (computer) assigns pairs/triplets.

2. First person in the pair goes to the lab channel, clicks the camera and then “Meet Now”

3. Add a subject. “Team # (Names)”

4. Click “Meet Now”.

5. Invite the other members of the team.

6. Other members of the Team join.

7. Discuss/work/chat/whatever.

Come back in five minutes!

Back from detour.

Lab

See instructions.

You’ll work together and individually. When working individualy, feel free to ask each other questions. And feel free to post questions in your chats.

The mentors and I will wander through the meetings to check in with you. We’ll also watch the chats and drop in when we see questions show up.

Submit the lab on Gradescope when you are done.

Debrief

Will we have time? We’ll see!

Of course not. Sam never plans enough times for activities.