A while ago I wrote about a small side project - GitHub Org Explorer - a small tool to make it easier to manager GitHub repositories based on organization. I'm using it as a replacement for the GitHub provided Classroom Assistant. I find it more flexible in terms of exporting assignments to my own machine and it allows me to delete repos en masse which is critical after the semester is over.

I'm a big fan of GitHub Classroom and use it for all of my class assignments. It's great for organizing, distributing, and collecting assignments and gets the kids used to using real world tools at the same time. I've written a bunch of posts on how I use it: How I use GitHub Classroom Communicating with Students - meybe GitHub to the rescue GitHub as a tool for education (part of a 4 part series) As well as a couple of others.

Last week I talked about using GitHub issues as a mechanism for class communication. I thought it might be helpful to follow up on it and also felt that a video would be better than text. So, here it is, 16 minutes on how you can use GitHub issues for class communication. I don't show examples of everything like @ tagging but I think it shows some of the power of using GitHub and GitHub classroom beyond just a software repo and versioning.

With ISTE ending, the next big event for CS treachers is the annual CSTA Conference. I first attended two years ago in Baltimore. Last year the conference, in Omaha was bigger and better in every way imaginable. I expect this year to be the best yet. I don't go to a lot of conferences so I don't have much to compare CSTA with but I like the fact that it's is about half the size of SIGCSE.

It's been an amazingly unproductive weekend. Mostly because I've been sick with the flu. It sucks but since the rest of the family's away anway at least I'm not making everyone miserable. I did manage to stage my next couple of classes and figured that writing this post wouldn't take too much energy since it's mostly a video. Earlier, I talked about using GitHub and TravicCI and this time around I show how I use GitHub classroom to set up, disseminate, and collect assignments.

Earlier today I was reminded why I love GitHub in support of my classes. One of my students posted a question about our current lab. They posted a synopsis of the problem along with the error message. Since we're all working on GitHub the student's work was already up online Since I started using GitHub Classroom I was able to quickly navigate to the repo. This might have been enough but to really in to the students work I cloned the repo and went into Emacs.

I've been using GitHub with my classes since GitHub's early days. Over time I've gotten my workflows down. I use a combination of shell scripts - many just written on the fly, GitHub organizations, and some naming conventions and protocols that have served me well. A few years ago, the GitHub Education team started GitHub Classroom. I looked at it at the time. It was pretty cool but I had my workflow so I didn't adopt it.

One of the things I've heard for years from former students - both those looking for jobs and those looking to hire is that colleges don't really do a good job preparing students for careers in tech. Sure they teach the algorithms and the theory but ther are a lot of missing pieces, particularly on the practical end. I'm certainly not advocating turning CS programs into coding schools but there are many low cost opportunities to bring practical real world best practices in to the CS classroom.

I haven't been teaching this past semester. That's why I haven't been writing much about lessons. I miss working with students but that will resume in the fall and this semester has allowed me to get a jump on new projects. It's also allowed me to look at some student issues from a bit of a distance. One issue that keeps coming up is cheating. Some of it, classroom cheating.