---
# System prepended metadata

title: Sprott House Debrief
tags: [Accelerator Project, Sprott House]

---

# Sprott House Debrief
:calendar: October 6 2019

## Things to talk about
1. Logistics to fix for next time
2. Survey Feedback
3. General thoughts on how things went
4. Feedback on how lessons went

## Logistics
+ Claire's phone number: 647-625-1102
+ Be careful don't crush your hand in the front door
+ how to log into computers
	+ usr: sprott2@ymca.org
	+ passwd: sprottymca2019
+ WIFI passowrd
	+ SSID: YMCA Guest
	+ passwd: sprottymca2019
+ **bring laptops for each student!!**
+ chromebooks kind of suck
	+ survey couldn't be loaded on it
	+ unusable for electronics
	+ **but it does work for code combat and other web IDEs**

### Upstairs or downstairs rooms
+ Prolly just use upstairs next time. Downstairs was too crowded and nobody minded coming upstairs it seems

## Survey Feedback
> These results are a little skewed because one student didn't fill out the survey (we forgot to tell her about it) **and** she was already experienced in programming

**[SURVEY RESULTS HERE!](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WNR5AuyReJX-JP6LkVZSz-_NVjZgEZxOjQuINFy0a5E/edit#responses)**

## General thoughts on how things went
+ doing the meal first as an intro seemed effective. Casual conversation allowed us to build repport before the lesson. There were some pretty good shared laughs
+ Some kids had ideas about how coding could effect their business goals, even though **usually their business goals were not related to coding**
	+ one kid "any time I want to create a product or sell a service I need to create a website"
	+ **A lot of other people asked about creating a website**
+ with this group people were pretty smart and knowledgable about Coding. 
	+ though there wasn't a lot of confidence about pursuing it on their own
	+ consider structing curiculum around building confidence.  
	+ remember to take a breather every once in a while and look back at the shit-ton of code you just wrote. 
+ asking about folks interests, what they do for fun. It helped to breakdown barriers
	+ helped later so you can tailor your analogies to the student's interest
+ a lot easier than delivery at st. felix 

## Feedback on how lessons went
### Code Combat
Remember to take a break and give people a chance to sign up and save their progress. 
- Prolly all instructors should play at least the first *world* of the game. **Some of the challenges are very difficult**. It's often helpful to know the solution already.
- It's also fun to see alternative solutions that the kids come up with
- Code combat may be too rudementary for students with coding experience

### Electronics
+ We need more computers setup to program these Arduinos
+ We need more robotics kits (4)
+ find a walker robot?!
+ restructure course to have a heavier focus on debugging?!
	+ a few hardware things broke during the demo and we had to do debugging anyway
	+ it's worth considering making debugging a structured part of the lesson
+ best reaction was to turning one servo off and the other one on. She got really excited about that
	- another good reaction: "nothing that is on the table right now is worth more than 3 dollars"
### Harder challenges for kids with experience
+ make a website on web IDE
+ teach them git
+ teach em flutter

## Action Items
+ (Dilini) Consolidate Sprott house and St Felix Survey Excel files 
+ (Zach) Prep 2 additional computers for electronics (or find someone for the 20th who can bring some)
	+ (Zach) Give Rishi the electronics kits
+ (Dilini) Send consolidated survey results to Sprott house
+ (Francois and Rishi) Create a "Build a small website" lesson
	+ also consider building a "make a small app" lesson
	+ maybe use **flutter**
+ (Francois + Zach + Rishi) Find a web IDE that supports GIT
+ (Dilini) Ask Sprott house about getting some other computers that aren't chromebooks (and ideally we can put Linux on them). 
+ (Zach) Print more Robot Claws
+ (Zach) add more structure to the robot

-----
## Oct 8 meeting notes 
present: Dilini, Francois, Rishi, Josh, Winston (biz school BG), Dimuth, Emily [client relations, pub speaking]
+ used Code Combat b/c it's basic Python
+ session was gender balanced
+ DK: some participants were adept but did not appear to think they were adept; FL: encouragement is very important as self-esteem may be fragile/low
 
##  New discussion re. curriculum streams:



Build a website:
+ biowebsite
+ pedagogy: 
    + 1) environment/markup
    + 2) styling
    + 3) uploading to internet (GIT/GIThub)
        + why is this important? 
            + confidence buidling
            + it makes user look/feel like a hacker
            + version control

Build an app: 
+ this is difficult, maybe don't do this first

Build a business idea: 
+ partnership w/ Business in the Streets: Dilini met its ED
+ Enactus student group supports/creates social enterprises: Winston has connection to it 


Art Project<---->Robotics
+ Zach: he brought in RGB LED 'robot'/pieces of electronics that can communicate with each other through the light they emit
+ microcontrollers PEDAGOGY
    + 1. environment: test w/ pre-programmed example; put vs code on your computer 
    + 2. manipulate a script for servo motor
    + 3. RGB LED / neo-pixels: create four loops


-floated idea of working towards certification in the $100s for course + examination (e.g., Amazon); some people indicated that this may not have much value for employment/jobs but some of them do (action item: need more research)
*     -offensive security dev certification -         $1000s 
*     -AWS (note: DevOps) - free (John is working     on completing)
*     -GCP (google's version of amazon) - free         (Rishi's done this)




---

## Discussion Points

* Thoughts on offsite programming - what are the barriers/requirements?
* What is the cadence of our meetings ?




## Debrief
**October 20, 2019**
### Things to talk about
1. Logistics to fix for nextime
2. Survey Feedback
3. General thoughts on how things went
4. Feedback on how lessons went

### Logistics to fix for nextime
- Survey should allow for an 'other/custom' for the lesson they took (Adam)
- Start to develop easy to access resources that instructors could use for these drop-ins (either at Felix or Sprott)
- A potential student hesitated to participate due to how many people were in the room (at least 7) 
- Less participation due to absence of key motivating staff (i.e. Nicole) and maybe due to no presence at dinner
- Aim for 5 instructors at a time
- We went past **8pm**
    - if we're not joining them for dinner maybe we should just show up after dinner (7pm??)
- Saturdays were said to be better from Claire

### Survey Feedback
### General thoughts on how things went 
+ We did a shit job with pronouns; new protocol when teaching or introductions: introduce yourself and your pronoun; also can ask what pronouns they use if they don't indicate it
+ We should use Dilini's data if we need Wifi  
 
### Feedback on how lessons went

- Lesson went well, student was challenged with a curriculum in line with their goals and got a sense of real projects (Adam)

#### Stephanie & John (participant 8)
+ student was interetested in making a game
+ liked gamification of code combat, bc likes games
+ talked to them about civic tech, opportunity to follow up about it
+ liked the aspect that you can do things and see them happen on the screen (?)
+ said wanted to start getting into coding, felt CodeCombat was a good / easy place to start
+ John's feedback: annoying that there's a paywall after the really intro/basic stuff
+ John's feedback: CodeCombat has bad form e.g. loops aren't designed like true loops
+ Zach suggested referral to **Dames making Games**

#### Adam (participant 1 of returning)
+ quick learner, very smooth
+ new curriculum on the fly. Had a discussion first about where they're at, and developed something based on that to challenge them & teach new concepts
+ graet candidate for the program
+ very intersted in coming back for the info session / any of our next sessions


#### Shubhi (participant 7) 
+ had trouble with dot-notation (hero.move_up())
+ had issues with using laptop keyboard
+ mentioned they had some data entry experience (but seemed to confuse this with coding)
+ they said they'd continue this by restarting so they can understand properly the first levels (but didn't create an account; said they'll do it on their own)

#### Zach (participant 9)
+ friendly fellow, had an initial interest in *HACKING!!!*
+ Zach had a strong hook for them, but the lesson wasn't as cool so ended up losing a bit of interest
    + Zach's strong hook for the was a WiFi Deauther made out of ESP8266 + 2 AA batteries
+ lots of hand holding; couldn't do a lot of unsupervised coding (may have been difficulty of lesson itself); lots of stumbling over C++ syntax
+ suspect they didn't feel that they had accomplished anything by the end of the lesson
    + Stephanie: likely that they were intimidated by the block of code (C++ especially); might be scary to tackle it 
+ Zach indicated perhaps an alternative approach that could have worked better may have been building by brand new product, not tinkering, because they may not have felt ownership of/agency over results 
+ Dilini's thoughts: may also not be good fit for this challenge level of programming langauage


## Talk with Claire

Key takeaways:
+ potential for offsite visits but require protocol around it to maintain professional boundaries 
+ discussed having 2 mentors per participant (Claire liked this)
+ Once individual plan is developed, mentors should have direct relationship with caseworkers to discuss indiviudal needs (e.g. some participants require chaperones, etc.; caseworkers will be able to ID this need)
+ opporutnity for us to market information session within their newsletter
    + Zohel might want to write this (Dilini chatted with him)
+ two options for information session:
    + mid/late-November OR
    + January start 



* One participant was not able to make it due to saying she had. to get ready for the week but not any negative towards the program
* Not having a goal can make it hard to coming back on an ongoing basis
* Does the participant have the time or equipment to do homework if we enable the curiculum?
* Claire can provide ttc tokens to get them to differnt places and events if they need to meet us.
* Some people might be anxious in terms of going and not knowing the logitics of the place and meeting itself
* Engage the case workers on what is the plan for dealing with how and what the person needs to get to the event
* Having mentor/mentee relationships can create a better attendance rate and make them feel more comfortable for out of inhouse events
* Can also get them to attend Civic Tech TO so they can see if they want to get involved certain projects
* Professional boundaries should be in a place as this is a concern when getting the participants to attend outside events
* Backups are a good idea for the mentor/mentee relationship
* Maintaining professional relationships are more important 
* ACTION ITEM:
    * Create some initial protocol for the participants attending civicTech - This has to do with professional boundaries, logistics and any other liabilities
    * We need to figure out what the information session looks like and when we plan to hold it in sprott
    * Submit something for the newsletter so we can show what types of projects and goals that they can learn from the program. This is a good place to put a summary of what will be in the info session and also a time for the session

* Mid to late november is an opportunity to do info session because there might be less things for them to do
* We could have a soft launch of the info session in mid november and then do it again in January to see what are the learning points
* The surveys have all the names of the people that took part and have been sent to Claire. She will be tracking down these participants to follow up and encourage them 
* We have 9/20 participants that took a lesson 
* Claire can also help with a code of conduct
* Saturdays are also better 
* First launch of the newsletter will be on Sunday coming (27th Oct)
* Financial board are funded privately
* Info sessions can count as one for their passport

### Information Session coming up in November
+ the outcome is intended to be: someone is able to walk away with their initial plan for their first project 
    + high level details
    + what their goals are
    + who their initial mentor is (point of contact)
    + when/where they meet their mentor and how often
+ mentors and user researchers will collaberate match client with best mentor
    + continually triage to create best mentor match
+ We'll have some generic projects for folks to choose from if they need some guidance
+ Mentors will be organized into stations where clients can go to each and learn about what their experise is
+ Mentors will collaberate on how to strengthen particular skills and lessons
+ Every mentor should be involved in developing a sample project


### Action Items
+ [ ] Confirm signups & number of people interested
+ [ ] Better promotion? We didn't get the opportunity to sit down with the clients at dinner and onboard
+ [ ] Have a on-the-fly & in-dept lesson plan in case someone finds the prepared lesson too easy/boring
+ [ ] Share info on CivicTech with **Claire**
+ [ ] Discuss & set boundaries for interacting with participants(at Sprott House & outside). The Code of conduct for volunteers. **Michael & Dilini**
    + [ ] Drill Zach to get him to stop saying Man and Dude  & Guys for Shubhi
+ [ ] Figure out a CivicTech night with intersted participants. Confirm Sprott House to give TTC tokens, figure out logistics for meeting them.
+ [ ] Newsletter for Info Session - make sure we're on it!!
+ [ ] Info session to be set for Mid november as a soft launch and then again in January
+ [ ] Group work/sessions together based on similarity and mentor expertise eg. If two participants are doing work on web dev. Embed group work into lesson plan - Hack night with all participants.
+ [ ] Expectations and protocols for mentors 

## Intake
### Action Items
* [ ] Script for participants that are not a good fit based on technical requirements. What is a poor fit and what can we say. A soft rejection script. **Rishi**
* [ ] UX researchers, screening interview with four different outcomes
    * [ ] Specific goals and mentor assigned/available
    * [ ] specific goal, no mentor available, followup required
    * [ ] no specific goals, design template projects, default projects
    * [ ] Poor fit
* [ ] Resources for their learning. Events around the city, online courses eg. code combat**John**, **Mike**
* [ ] Hardware resources and scripts **John**, **Zach**

###### tags: `Sprott House` `Accelerator Project`

