Better support for complete novices

[gabekneisley]

I love the concept, but where does a novice go? The whole project presupposes a level of knowledge and enthusiasm that some readers may not have yet. For example, a reader needs to create an issue (basically complain) to join a discussion. I'd suggest a welcome video, a friendly link to what github is and what you do, and a thorough explanation of why github is so important as an educational and critical thinking tool.

Specifically, I mean something like:

GitHub is a software company dedicated to helping people organize, annotate, and share knowledge. Our technology is built upon, and heartily embraces open source software. In fact, XX% of the world's open source projects use GitHub to keep things moving smoothly. We believe our expertise at organization, annotation, and sharing can work for education as well as it has for computer programming....

Basically, if it were explained more thoroughly, I think it would encourage sharing because it would be a painless read for those new to some of the concepts, and a solid grounding in how to explain it externally for those in the know.

[hpssjellis]

A few videos are a really useful starting point. I try to make learning to computer program as easy as possible. I use github since it combines with phonegap.com to allow simple creation of mobile apps. One of my videos is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R03pS0ad2qs

Github is useful even if you do not use all the features. Just having a look at other peoples programs is useful for students. Searching github for "pgb-helloworld" or https://github.com/search?q=pgb-helloworld&ref=cmdform will show as a teacher how I can use github to allow my students to "fork" my working programs as templates for their own work.

I have not yet used github for it's collaboration abilities but plan on doing it soon with my classes.

[afeld]

The whole project

Do you mean this repository, or GitHub+education in general?

where does a novice go?

Do you mean "...to understand how to participate in this repository", or "...to understand GitHub"? For the former, we could add a link from the how-to to the issues guide, but that guide covers features that go way beyond what they would need to participate here. For the latter, we have a section in the guide, but this could be surfaced more.

a reader needs to create an issue (basically complain) to join a discussion

Do you think this is mostly a semantic problem, or that people might not know how they work?

why github is so important as an educational and critical thinking tool

Ah, yes. I think answering that question is more a job for https://education.github.com, and I don't want to have to replicate that information. Maybe it's a matter of adding "Wondering why you'd use GitHub to teach? Go here." to the README.

[gabekneisley]

Thanks for the thorough, thoughtful reply! I'll try to be clearer about what I'm thinking here...

The whole project Do you mean this repository, or GitHub+education in general?

Kind of both. Once a person groks a thing like GitHub, it is hard to remember what it was like to have no concept of it. And another thing I haven't said yet (that probably adds a little perspective to my comments :smiley:) is that I figure the way to make STEM concepts, and specifically CS stick is to use it all over the curriculum. Math includes work writing programs, using spreadsheets, learning R. English involves collaborative technical writing and n-gram analyses. History and social studies include probability and statistics work, etc. So GitHub could be the functional glue holding a curriculum like that together. Those of us who use GitHub all the time know it is an obvious tool for such work, but how do we teach a STEM evangelist, or a parent who wants better tech education for students? In short, how do we sell this to the decision makers? Principals, the school boards, parents, education reformers?

where does a novice go? Do you mean "...to understand how to participate in this repository", or "...to understand GitHub"? For the former, we could add a link from the how-to to the issues guide, but that guide covers features that go way beyond what they would need to participate here. For the latter, we have a section in the guide, but this could be surfaced more.

Maybe this repository isn't the right place for it, but I think there needs to be an introduction starting at zero. The way it is presented on on GitHub for Government is much more novice-friendly. This video is good (although it could def do without the wubs :trollface:)

a reader needs to create an issue (basically complain) to join a discussion Do you think this is mostly a semantic problem, or that people might not know how they work?

I think it almost entirely semantic. Issue is a great term for repositories of code. The word has a very different meaning when sharing ideas. It isn't insurmountable, and because of its collaborative design, GitHub functions as an online community, but it has the vocabulary of a code repo, and that may need to be explained.

why github is so important as an educational and critical thinking tool Ah, yes. I think answering that question is more a job for https://education.github.com, and I don't want to have to replicate that information. Maybe it's a matter of adding "Wondering why you'd use GitHub to teach? Go here." to the README.

100% agree. I am not suggesting duplication, but rather pointing out that I have not seen any resources available under the education umbrella that really educates and sells the idea to a novice.

</novel> :)

[dpentecost]

Just wanted to agree with the commenter, even after more than a year with no further advances in this discussion.

gabekneisley is dead on - the semantics of GitHub are difficult to get past, the obstacles for novices are still there, most tutorials assume an understanding before you begin that just does not exist outside of computer science classes. It can be surmounted by obsessive googling and sheer persistence, but the evident usefulness of a shared repository in a wide range of fields calls for an effort to make it more accessible. I am tackling that challenge and I hope that gabekneisley also keeps working at it.