New Materials Landing page

[flannery-denny]

Thought it might be helpful to have a place to track feedback / suggestions on the new materials landing page.

• [x] Add "project boxes" to the explorer (game, sam, research paper, infographic, rocket...).
• [x] Reduce text at top of page. Proposed language:

We provide all of our research-based materials free of charge. And of course, all of our courses are aligned to National and State Standards - including NGSS, Common Core, CSTA, K12-CS, and more! We work hard to provide a "curriculum-in-a-box" experience, offering  Hour of Code activities and four curated pathways, that come with a detailed student workbook, narrative project, and teacher materials. You can also mix and match our materials by building your own pathway.

• [x] Clarify directions for build your own pathway. Proposed language:

Lessons that you can teach immediately are shaded blue. When you click on the lessons you'd like to teach,

• those lesson & any prerequisites for the lessons will turn green.
• all of the lessons available to you by completing the green lessons, will turn blue.

Select as many lessons as you'd like to include in your pathway before naming and saving.

@schanzer Is it possible to highlight the word shaded and turn green and select instead of putting a color block in front of the directions.

• [x] Add lesson links to lesson description bubbles
• [x] Address scrollbar issue (need to understand better)
• [x] add reset button
• [x] when a user saves their custom pathway, prereqs should appear before the selected lessons. And lessons that are available with only some of the prereqs should appear before additional prereqs.
• [x] When I mouse over the course images, the pop up boxes move build your own pathway out of the place where I anticipate clicking on it. Wondering if it might be better if the text boxes opened up instead of down?
• [x] There is something strange going on with the text of the button for visualizing shape of data
• [x] Once I get to my own pathway, how do I actually save it for future use? Is it a permanent url. Should we direct them to bookmark the page or save the url?
• [x] I like that what you can access without doing prereqs are all clustered at the beginning, but after that let's make sure that things that are most relatable to new to Bootstrap teachers appear on the first screen... things that are easily recognizable to math teachers as concepts that everyone teaches.
• [x] Some lessons show up duplicated

[flannery-denny]

@retabak - Do the directions above for build your own pathway work for you? If not, please include a revision in a comment below.

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny I copy/pasted your revised text for the top of the page (really nice job, btw), added a reset button, and largely implemented your directions. I changed the wording slightly, and I think I implemented your formatting suggestion correctly. Let me know if I'm on the right track?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer. I think it's definitely moving in the right direction :) I'm adding other fixes to the task list.

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer @retabak confirmed that the proposed directions for build your own pathway make sense with a tense change which I have implemented.

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny

• I've added code that lets the page grow downwards when you mouseover one of the curated pathways.
• Figured out the nasty text encoding issue that was effecting the curly quotes around "shape" of data
• Once you get your pathway, you need to bookmark it. These instructions are already on the new landing page, but I've added them to the custom pathway page as well.
• clustering the math lessons at the beginning is a good idea. Which ones would you rank first?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer

I wonder whether it would make sense to think of the grid you have as 4 columns organized by theme (data - math - video games - ? at least until you run out of items - so that at first glance teachers get a sense of the range of the lessons available?)

These are the lessons I think we want to make most visible to math teachers:

1. Order of Operations
2. Displaying Categorical Data - The title needs to say bar charts and pie charts in it
3. Scatterplots
4. Histograms
5. Spread of a Dataset - The title needs to say box plots
6. Functions for Character Animation
7. Sam the Butterfly - Applying Inequalities
8. Surface Area of a Rectangular Prism
9. Measures of center the title needs to say mean, median, mode in it
10. Flags - the title needs to say ratios and the coordinate plane
11. Compound inequalities: solutions & non-solutions
12. Linear Regression
13. The Distance Formula

Lessons titles most likely to pique interest in programming

1. The Numbers inside video games
2. Coordinates & game design
3. player animation
4. ethics and privacy

I think of least interest to someone who has not yet bought into using the curriculum are:

• Method Chaining
• Defining Values
• Choosing your dataset
• Grouped Samples
• Checking Your work
• Piecewise Functions (this would not be true if it were titled image scatterplots)
• Problem Decomposition
• If-Expressions
• Restating the Problem
• Defining Functions
• Defining Values
• Contracts
• Table Methods
• Simple Datatypes

Probably missing something, but it's a start.

The last time I looked at this page there seemed to be more lessons. Pretty sure there was one called pong among them. Where did it go?

[retabak]

@schanzer @flannery-denny

I like this proposal - but even more, I like the idea of having buttons that teachers can click which have important mathematical concepts on them! (Emmanuel knows I am into this idea, even though perhaps he is not.) I think a teacher who doesn't really know what we're about which will be much enticed to explore our lessons if they can click buttons that say things like "inequalities," "box plots," "ratios," "scaling," "word problems," etc.

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny Unfortunately, there's no "four column" layout here. People with narrower screens might see only three columns, or two - or five! And on phones it will likely render as a single column. So I think we need to think of this a 1-dimensional list of lessons, with the highest value ones coming first.

It sounds like we're in agreement that putting the "immediately accessible" list first is the right way to go, and then I'm hearing that we want the lessons in your first list to come next. I also love the proposed renaming! Anyway, the new lesson order is up and running. I put the reactive lessons back, so pong has made its return as well. :)

Be aware, however, that hardcoding an order means the chance of this page breaking in the future goes WAY up. If we add a new lesson, remove a lesson, or change the folder name of a lesson, the hardcoded order will ALSO have to change. In general, introducing brittleness is a bad idea.

@retabak I still don't really understand your proposal. Where are all these buttons you're talking about? Where do they go? Is that that much harder harder than typing "inequalities" into the search bar?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer Not seeing the change in lesson order or titles on the landing page. But I do love the pre-populated search bar animation.

I'm not sure where @retabak wants the buttons to go, but I think that a concern the we both currently share is the fact that when we get to this page as middle school math teachers, we don't recognize most of the terms on the page as being relevant to us and we might not be inspired to bother searching.

[schanzer]

Try this link: https://bootstrapworld.org/materials/fall2021/en-us/index-new.shtml?subject=math

You wouldn't recognize the terms in the search bar animation?

Finding a place to put 30+ buttons on the page is going to be hard, and I don't think that actually helps teachers find what they're looking for.

[flannery-denny]

1. That link and the new order are better, but I don't think they're fully dialed in.
2. I'm not seeing title edits.
3. The search bar animation is pretty subtle. But I do recognize the terms and the range of search strategies they represent.
4. I think we need to tighten up the spacing on the build your own pathway directions. I suggest, moving the second line up next to the first. Removing some of the white space before and after the bullets. Switching from numbers bullets to dots. Changing the word "it" from the first bullet to "the lesson"

[schanzer]

1. What's missing?
2. I worry about renaming lessons in the middle of the school year - won't that be disorienting to teachers?
3. Made the search bar larger and gave it a slight background shadow to give it more attention
4. Implemented all these great suggestions.

[flannery-denny]

We don't have to change the names of the lesson in order to have these buttons read in a friendlier way. Lesson Names can stay as is on their lesson plans and in the predefined DS and Algebra pathways. But, for this page, the buttons should make the math content of the lessons more visible.

If you can't do that, then I think we either need to a) rethink the design of this page or b) build this page AND a page that makes the middles school math content more visible in the way that @retabak describes and I originally attempted to mock up.

[schanzer]

Adding a SECOND page is a non-starter.

Is the page at https://bootstrapworld.org/materials/fall2021/en-us/index-new.shtml?subject=math really that bad for math teachers? Can we not launch with this, and then have it get meaningfully better a few months later? How would you redesign this page, if we can't change lesson titles?

[flannery-denny]

I am confused as to why it is a nonstarter to write a set of conditionals for this page for the section that prints the button titles, that take in the lesson plan titles and return something more math teacher friendly for the handful of lessons that we propose renaming.

If we're doing the work to drive new people to the website from the fora that @retabak proposes engaging with on sm, it seems like we should try to get their experience to be as welcoming as possible. If I go to a page and it doesn't serve me, I am unlikely to give it another try down the line.

[schanzer]

Ohhhhh - you're proposing changing the title ONLY for the button, but not for the lesson which generates it?

And even then, only for the current school year, since we can change the lesson title after this year?

BRILLIANT. F@cking brilliant. I'll get on this ASAP!

(And JFYI - I never said that was a nonstarter. It's the creation of a second page that's the issue. But that's not what you're proposing here)

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny lesson renaming is complete!

[flannery-denny]

thanks :) @schanzer. we may be able to dial the names in a little more once @retabak weighs in with some other brilliant ideas about how to make the page more beautiful/functional, but, for now, I think that's a huge improvement. (perhaps the compound inequalities button doesn't need the subtitle so it doesn't get so big?)

On Fri, Sep 3, 2021 at 12:02 PM Emmanuel Schanzer @.***> wrote:

@flannery-denny https://github.com/flannery-denny lesson renaming is complete!

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/bootstrapworld/curriculum/issues/581#issuecomment-912779617, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AP4Z7TEQW2DAOUC4AWQ3UALUAESURANCNFSM5DEYZ2HA .

[schanzer]

done. :)

[retabak]

Okay, after unintentionally ignoring git for far too long, I took a deep dive into this landing page.

• [x] The text at the top:

• "Common Core" should be CCSS (all the other standards are acronyms); in fact, I think it should be CCSS on this page, too. That's the acronym that teachers are familiar with, that is actually used in the standards themselves.

• The first time I read "curriculum-in-a-box" I sincerely had no clue what it meant. (Full disclosure: I googled it to see if it was a phrase or reference that I should know... then that old SNL sketch popped into my head, re: d*** in a box....) Anyhow! Now that I've read that sentence a dozen times, it TOTALLY makes sense to me - but I don't think we want readers to pause and scratch their heads.

• Same goes for the phrase "narrative project" - and even after reading that one a dozen times, I'm not sure what we're going for.

• In general.... I'm not super jazzed about this text, but am struggling to improve it. I want to be drawn in! I like this blurb abut Amplify Math. I also think @flannery-denny 's text at the top of the one-pager is stronger than what we have on the landing page and could be a jumping-off point. ("Bootstrap is field-tested and research-validated, with a focus on deep exploration that supports and engages all kinds of learners. Our integrated computing modules have been proven to support math transfer and can be mixed and matched to supplement what you’re already doing in your classroom." )

• [x] "Build your own pathway" text

• "Lessons that you can teach immediately" - I don't kow that folks will get what we're going for here. We might want to make it clear that you can teach these lessons tomorrow even if you have no CS background and your students have never coded before.

• [x] "You've selected the following lessons" text

• I know we've talked about this at length, @schanzer , but it still bothers me that, when I click just ONE box - let's say, "scatterplots" - this website tells me, "You've selected the following lessons: Simple Data Types, Contracts, Bar & Pie Charts, Scatter Plots." My instinct is to think, "This thing is broken, I only chose one," and then navigate away.

• [x] Custom pathway

• Is there any way for teachers to view the pathway BEFORE they've named it? Feels like a lot of commitment for a teacher who doesn't really know what we're about and just wants to take a peek at our stuff. I can imagine thinking, "What, I need to save a pathway? What is it supposed to be called, even? I'm already confused, no thanks."

• Can the lessons in the pathway be numbered sequentially? (Those need to be taught in order, right?) Teachers are used to lessons in a curriculum being numbered sequentially; it feels familiar and offers more structure.

• It looks funny that the boot logo shows up TWICE on this page (once in the header, and once on the right of the text).

• [x] Other

• Is there any way to make the scroll up/down bar and the scroll left/right bars disappear, and for the only scroll bar to be the one on the side of the browser? I think this is an outdated look; I don't see scroll bars on any other websites, these days (unless it's in a text box where I'm typing something).

• I feel like you should be able to access the lesson by clicking on the lesson's box? Is that possible? Or do folks need to wait for their pathway to appear to do that? I'm thinking of a teacher who's just poking around, who might read a lesson description on this page then want to check out the lesson--and feel annoyed that they can't see the lesson right away.

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer A few more button change suggestions:

• move Intro to Comp Data Science & Simple Datatypes to the top
• move Solving Word Problems way down on the screen. It's definitely not the lesson we want teachers clicking on first.
• Rename Contracts to "Contracts: Name, Domain & Range"
• Rename Checking your Work to "Is the analysis trustworthy" or "testing for trustworthiness"

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer There are still a few buttons on this page whose mouseover text pops to the left, making it off screen.

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny

• What do you mean by "move Intro to Comp Data Science & Simple Datatypes to the top"? Do you mean for the math-focused view, or for all views?
• Moved "Solving Word Problems" farther down in the math view
• Renamed Contracts
• how about "Evaluating Correctness" for checking-your-work?
• Can you share a screenshot of the button text going off the edge? UI work is insanely tricky, and without a screenshot I can't really reproduce what you're seeing.

@retabak

• Common Core -> CCSS is done
• Used Flannery's text, and replaced "curriculum in a box" and "narrative project" with phrases that I hope are more descriptive!
• "Lessons you can teach immediately" does not mean "even if you have no CS background and your students have never coded before"! If a teacher has taught six bootstrap lessons, the list of "lessons they can teach immediately" is quite large, and 100% assumes kids have coded before!
• "The lessons you've selected" is definitely a lie. I've revised this text. Let me know if it's better?
• We can do away with the name, I suppose. Maybe that's not a big deal? They could all be called "Custom Pathway" I guess...
• We could number them, but that hides the fact that some re-ordering can be done. This isn't as big of a deal in the custom pathways as it is in the curated ones, but are you sure the numbers would really give us a benefit worth the harm?
• Whoa, good call. Removed the logo.
• What other scrollbars do you mean?
• Clicking on the lesson's box was always part the plan. That's coming, but after all the other stuff gets resolved.

[retabak]

First - I just checked out the math-specific page and I'm excited about it! It's great to see all of those relevant topics right away!

I see what @flannery-denny is talking about re: button text going off the edge, so I took a screenshot:

The same thing happens for me with "Introduction to Computational Data Science" and "Grouped Samples" as well.

As for other concerns.

• The new text at the top of the page is much better (in my opinion)!
• Re: "lessons you can teach immediately" - oops, duh. I was thinking of the lessons that START out shaded blue. Nevermind, that comment was off-base!
• New text in place of "The lessons you've selected" is much better and no longer a lie. :)
• Re: 'doing away with the pathway name': My goal here is to remove barriers to entry! What advantage do you think requiring naming the pathway would have?
• Re: numbering - I'm less attached to this one and think it's partially a personal preference. My only real argument is that it would feel familiar to teacheres and (again) potentially remove a barrier to entry. Using our stuff requires that folks learn a lot, get creative, and do some deep thinking about integration. Taking one thing (determining lesson order) off teachers' plates could be nice? Most other curricula (that are numbered sequentially) can be re-ordered to some extent; I think that is a challenge many teachers take on AFTER they've gained some familiarity by teaching the curriculum in the established order.
• Glad to know (or be reminded?) that accessing lessons was always a part of the plan!
• Here are the scrollbars (which also block the lesson description text a little bit on the right):

[schanzer]

Tooltips are fixed! The issue was subtle: I do dynamic measurements of page width (every time the window is resized!), which computes which lesson buttons are on the right-hand or bottom edge. But that calculation didn't take the scrollbar width into account, so tips weren't being oriented properly.

This has now been fixed.

@retabak teachers may want to create more than one pathway. Given how similar the pages are, I think they need titles to differentiate them. If teachers don't add them here, we can't use them. How much of a barrier is it to just type some random characters, if a teacher wants to see it and doesn't care to come up with a name?

What else are we missing? :)

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer - I agree with you that there are teachers who want to be able to save more than one pathway and I agree with @retabak that it would be cool to be able to see the pathway before saving. Any chance of making the naming/save option appear once we get to the next page?

On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 8:53 AM Emmanuel Schanzer @.***> wrote:

New TODOs:

• At the bottom of the custom pathway page, add list of accessible lessons "now you can teach..."
• Number of accessible/required lessons at the bottom should take search results into account

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/bootstrapworld/curriculum/issues/581#issuecomment-916270386, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AP4Z7TCDES3O3A3V24N4AM3UBDQ7VANCNFSM5DEYZ2HA .

[schanzer]

No way to add the name later, no.

[retabak]

Bummer that folks can't save after viewing. In that case, I suppose putting in some random letters is not too big of an ask.

What about scroll bars? Any way to ditch those, or do others prefer to have them there?

And... numbering the lessons in the pathway? I think this feels familiar to teachers, and it's nice to see that there's a clear starting point.

[schanzer]

I assume you mean the scrollbars on the lesson explorer. Without those bars, how can people who use a mouse see all the lessons? Also, I don't think there's a cross-browser way to hide the bars completely, so the point may be moot.

Added numbers.

[retabak]

Whaaaaaat, that "Print Workbook" button is SO COOL! My mind is blown. I like the sequential lesson numbers too; hoping you're comfortable with them.

Confused why people who use a mouse wouldn't be able to see all lessons without the scroll bars? I'd like for folks to just be able to scroll down to see more.

The 2nd bullet under "build your own pathway" has a typo - it says, "if you haven't select any lesson yet." Should say, "If you haven't selected any lessons yet" I believe.

[flannery-denny]

My idea for this sentence was that it would end with the words "without any additional programming!" and I'm not sure that the list you are providing is actually accurate to that statement.

Once your students have finished this pathway, there are plenty of other Bootstrap lessons your students are ready to dive into!

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 8:11 AM retabak @.***> wrote:

Whaaaaaat, that "Print Workbook" button is SO COOL! My mind is blown. I like the sequential lesson numbers too; hoping you're comfortable with them.

Confused why people who use a mouse wouldn't be able to see all lessons without the scroll bars? I'd like for folks to just be able to scroll down to see more.

The 2nd bullet under "build your own pathway" has a typo - it says, "if you haven't select any lesson yet." Should say, "If you haven't selected any lessons yet" I believe.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/bootstrapworld/curriculum/issues/581#issuecomment-918350411, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AP4Z7TAC7LCNCFETFTWDFWTUBYPEZANCNFSM5DEYZ2HA .

[schanzer]

@retabak The workbook thing is very much in development. Don't expect it to work reliable, or for the page numbers to be accurate. That stuff is coming, but this is mostly just a test of some technology that should also improve our build speeds.

If people don't have scrollbars, how are they supposed to scroll?

I really dislike the sequential numbering. @flannery-denny what do you think about this? And why don't you think the statement you quoted is accurate?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer - take a look at my sample pathway. I selected histograms as the lesson around which the pathway should be built. I don't think I should be able to do all of the lessons that it gives me as available... and I don't think that histograms also belongs on the list. Similar issues arise in this sample pathway.

The numbered lessons in the custom pathway work okay if I build simple pathways (like the first link), but they don't make much sense for the second pathway I built.

We need to add a button in the build your own that says Design your own Videogame!

In trying to replicate that pathway, I selected collision detection and the pathway I got back reveals something is really wrong with our dependencies... all of the lessons that involve the game starter file should be dependent on each other, right?

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny If you selected 'histograms', it has to be on the list. The list is literally "all the things you selected (plus any prerequisites)". Why do you think the lesson you chose should be missing?

We don't have a "designing video games" lesson. Adding project boxes is going to be a separate item entirely (see my checklist above).

As for what's available - both lists look correct to me. A tremendous number of DS lessons become available once you've done "defining table functions" and "table methods". Is there a specific lesson that you know should not be accessible, but is marked as such?

There are a few open issues or comments right now where I need to play 20 questions to understand what's wrong before I can fix it. We can be a lot more efficient here.

[retabak]

Re: "If people don't have scrollbars, how are they supposed to scroll?"

On most websites these days, the only visible scrollbar is the one built into the browser. I feel like those scrollbars make our website look like it's from 20 years ago. If I go shopping for jeans at the Gap online, I just scroll down using the one and only scrollbar (that's built into the browser), and I see more and more photos of jeans.

I think the exception is scroll bars on menus, which indicate to folks that there is more content to come. In the case of this "build your own ppathway" tool, I think there is already the expectation of more content, so the scrollbar is just visual clutter. (TBH, I think the black rectangle that frames all of the lessons is also unneeded.) I sincerely can't find any examples of a scrollbar like ours on any websites. I just see scrollbars alongside menus--again, to indicate "more content to come."

Trying my best to be clear but worried that maybe this is still confusing.

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer How can it be correct that Histograms is listed as number 13 in this pathway and ALSO listed as a lesson in the What's next list?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer - any reason not to edit the initial comment box to include all of the todos so that they are easy to find without rereading 37 comments and get tracked as completed or not by git? That's been my strategy for all other issues...

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny ah! Now I see what you mean. Fixed. And great idea about putting all the todos up top. Done. @retabak - Is your proposal that the lesson explorer (all the boxes) just be as tall as it needs to be, with no box around it or scrolling? I'm open to that.

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer

1. Is there a new link I should be using to get to the materials landing page? When I build the pathway screenshotted below around Displaying Categorical Data it's still showing up in the What's Next? list, as are the two prerequisities: Contracts & Simple Datatypes.
2. Also, why would intro to CS come after Displaying Categorical Data?
3. I'd love to see the sentence: Once your students have finished this Pathway, there are plenty of other lessons they are ready to dive into end with something like without any additional coding

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny

1. The same link should work. I just re-pushed the latest version, and I'm not seeing "Displaying Categorical Data".
2. Oooh, good call. The code I wrote on the landing page to sort-by-prereq should also be used on the custom pathway page. Done.
3. This new wording doesn't feel right to me. Those lessons DO require coding. The main thing is that those lessons require no new prerequisites, since they've already been taught as part of the custom pathway. How would you feel about "Once your students have finished this pathway, they've already completed all the prerequisites for the following lessons:" ?

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer

1. seems to be fixed
2. the wording you propose works for me.

[retabak]

RE: "Is your proposal that the lesson explorer (all the boxes) just be as tall as it needs to be, with no box around it or scrolling? I'm open to that."

Yes! Man, I guess I was really struggling to communicate that. Tall lesson explorer with no box + no scrolling. :)

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer Noticing that the one pagers are still building in __sample pathway. Seems they should ultimately end up somewhere else, since we use __sample for our quick builds. No idea where, but trust it will be obvious to you.

[schanzer]

@flannery-denny thanks for bringing this to my attention! For now, I'm moving them to the algebra pathway

But longterm, we can't just dump them in a particular pathway, so they need to go somewhere else. But we don't currently have a place to put adocs that belong to neither a lesson nor a pathway. Alas, this will need Dorai's attention as well. I'll open an issue for this (sorry in advance, Dorai!).

[schanzer]

@retabak @flannery-denny - I've pushed a beta version of the project list. There are some known issues I'll grab tomorrow (projects listed twice, for example), but I could use some quick feedback on the following:

• How do you feel about the revised directions? They needed changing with the addition of projects, but I know how much work went into the wording and I don't think my changes will be the final word on the subject!
• How do you feel about the look of the project boxes? I needed something to differentiate them, but it's early in the process. I was thinking it might make sense to badge all the boxes with an icon - one for lessons and one for projects - but maybe that's busier than is necessary.
• We don't have a standard description for projects, so I cobbled together some text from the projects themselves. Suggestions welcome!

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer I tried visiting the link at the top of this issue and the page I get to doesn't show any lessons. Lmk where to find what you want feedback on and I'll try to get it to you. Thanks!

[schanzer]

It's on the master branch. (In general, you should never look on the website for an issue that is in active development.)

[flannery-denny]

@schanzer where on the master branch? Up until this point all feedback has been given based on the link you shared. And I'm looking at the master branch and not seeing it in any of the folders that I'm thinking of.

[schanzer]

1) Run ./build-pathway 2) open distribution, and look for index-new.shtml

[flannery-denny]

1. Directions

I would suggest renaming to "Project: Snacking Habits" so that the box is the same size as the others.

Under Build Your Own Pathway, I think it would look better if the highlighted question text were followed by the directions starting on the same line rather than on the next line.

I would change: Where do you want to go? to something like What are your Bootstrap goals?

I would change this:

If you haven't selected anything yet, the blue items can be taught with no prerequisites. The more lessons and projects you select, the more material is immediately within reach

to

If you haven't selected anything yet, the blue items can be taught with no prerequisites. As you commit to teaching lessons and projects, additional items will turn blue to indicate that they could be added without additional prerequisites.

2. Project Boxes I think I like the interspersed projects better than having them all at the top. I don't have a strong opinion about the look of the boxes. I think I like the word Project at the beginning rather than an icon because it's very clear. Since the boxes are already a unique shape, you might not have to use a separate color for them.

3. I'll think about individual project descriptions another time.

4. I want to come up with a different color suggestion for the mouseover text and "check it out", but I was able to figure out that I should click on those words to see the lessons :)