We will be using a few means of communication between teachers and students throughout the school year. The first one will be this website, where teachers will keep their pages updated with short posts on what the weekly project is. The second will be a version control system known as GitHub. Finally, we will also send emails as necessary throughout the year to keep students and parents up to date.
GitHub – What’s That?
GitHub is the version control system used as a standard by many coders and software developers around the world. But what’s it for, you ask. Imagine you’re writing a new video game and want to test out a couple of new feature ideas but aren’t sure if they’ll break your code. You could make a copy of your whole project and store it somewhere else, and then make your changes, but then you’d have a lot of copies sitting around on your computer. The idea of a version control system is that you can store your copies remotely, and if some change ever breaks your code, you can go back and get your old code back. This is a bit like how you save a report for school as you work on it, but if you accidentally delete a paragraph, you can click undo to get it back. GitHub is just the same thing, but on a bigger scale.
Why is CCCoders using GitHub? We have chosen to use GitHub as the means of communicating code and storing it at CCCoders for a few reasons. First, it’s what programmers really use out in the world, so CCCoders students can have a head start and see what it’s like. Secondly, it’s a free, open source platform, so there is no associated charge and each student can sign up with just an email account. Three, it provides somewhere for students to back up their code so they can access it from home if they want to share what they’re working on with friends and family. Finally, it provides an easy way for students without an email address to download code shared by their teachers.
To access GitHub and see what we’re up to, visit https://github.com/CCCoders/CurrentYear/
Expectations of Students Using GitHub
Because GitHub is a professional website and the CCCoders portion of it is publically accessible, we expect students to behave in a responsible manner. For the groups using GitHub, teachers will help students set up their own account in the first couple weeks of class and will give them an overview of how to use it. Please be aware that any student violating the rules may have their account access to CCCoders revoked, and, depending on the seriousness of the violation may be expelled from CCCoders.
These guidelines are mostly common sense and respect, so please take a moment to familiarize yourself with them. Also, please keep in mind that your individual teachers may have more rules to add, depending on how your group’s folder is set up.
- Do not post code that you didn’t write.
- Do not modify or delete code that is not your own unless you have received permission from the code’s owner.
- Do not create new repositories
- Only upload/download code as directed by your teacher.
- If you don’t know what a button does, please ask before clicking it.
- Do not change settings. We have set GitHub up in a specific way to make it work for everyone in CCCoders.
- If something seems like it isn’t working for you, or you’re unsure about something, ask your teacher.
A full guide for students to learn about using GitHub can be found here