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In Week 20, I was travelling to BLR (Foundation) and BOM (Frappe), but the show went on.

Python

Shivam and Kaushal helped them practice simple programs without conditionals or loops (yet to be covered). They are now comfortable with input, output (print, sep, end), variables, and operators. After coming back, I taught them about conditionals and lists, which they are practicing this week.

Initially I had thought to cover all the foundation in a sprint of lectures and then practice for the following weeks, but I quickly realised that is going to be tough for them. The approach of teaching one concept (example: variables) and then getting them good at using that construct seems to be working better.

CS17 Platform Pro Max

Kaushal took over the CS17 portal (Frappe app) and polished it a lot. He added a lot of nice features including a code assignment platform.

For example, we can assign programming assignments to students and run automated tests on them:

For problem set assignments, he added an in-browser preview for ZIP files, which saves faculty time:

Overall, the portal will be a huge payoff starting with the next cohort (if we decide to do one 🤞🏼).

Pizza Party

We had an impromptu Pizza party at the campus after learning about conditionals. This felt long overdue since we hadn’t done any outing after the Frappeverse trip.

Team Catch-up

Indu ji, Rekha ji, and I had a catch up call. We discussed student performance, counselling, and other programme related things. First set of IGNOU assignments have been submitted at the centre. We also discussed the frequent electricity blackouts and how we might have to rethink the venue in the long term.

We also discussed individual performance of students and areas for improvement. Overall I think it was good catching-up!

Up Next

Wrap up Loops and then proceed with the monthly exams. One notable thing will be that even the Q1 syllabus will be part of these exams, as we don’t want “aage paath, piche sapaat”.