General Instructions > Part 1 > Part 2 > Submission
Part 1: Tutorial
Much or our class lesson materials use tutorials that you will either read, watch, and/or listen to to learn concepts. Each week of class you read/watch/listen to these lesson materials then write your code using what you learned. This part of the pre-work assignment will give you an idea of what that is like. Follow the steps below to create a free account with Khan Academy. Then work through the Intro to JavaScript: Drawing and Animation lesson. The lesson is broken down into 18 lessons which are made up of one or more “talk-throughs” (a video that demonstrates writing code while talking through what is happening on the screen), challenges that test your understanding of what was just covered, and/or a mini-project that helps you put the pieces you learned together. Plan your time accordingly!
The tutorial has two tasks:
- Sign up for a free Khan Academy account
- Work through the 18 lessons in Unit 1: Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation
After you complete the tutorial, you will use what you learn to make your own animation and submit that code as your pre-work assignment.
Tutorial: Task 1 of 2
Sign up for a free Khan Academy account (this will allow you to save your progress throughout the lesson)
- Click here to go to the Khan Academy sign up page, keep “Learner” selected and enter your date of birth.
You DO NOT need a class code.
The sign up page will look like this:
- Once you enter your birthday you’ll have the option to sign in using a google, facebook, or apple account, or you can select Sign Up with Email if you don’t have any of those types of account or don’t want to use them.
The sign in options page will look like this:
NOTE: If you sign up with an email you’ll need to create a password. If you sign up with your google, Facebook, or apple account, follow the instructions in the pop up login window.
Tutorial: Task 2 of 2
Work through the 18 lessons. See the screenshots below for help in finding your way around the Khan Academy site and lessons. This process will take anywhere from 15-30 hours. We will not see any of your progress, only what you submit at the end, but this amount of work mirrors what you will experience in a CTD class.
For Code the Dream’s Intro pre-work, you only need to complete Unit 1: Drawing and Animation. You do not need to do the unit on CSS and HTML (unless you want to!).
- After signing up, you’ll be redirected to the unit menu on Intro to JS: Drawing & Animation.
It should look like this:
- The 18 lessons are provided in the unit menu on the left (area circled in orange):
- All the lesson details are listed on the right side.
- Work your way through each item within each lesson. Example: The first lesson, “Intro to programming”, has two items: a “talk-through”/video titled “What is Programming?” and an item to read titled “Learning programming on Khan Academy”
- The icon next to the item will tell you what it is:
- Click on a lesson item to access it. Example: when you click on the video “What is programming?” this screen appears:
When you’re in a lesson item (see below), you can:
- get back to the main unit menu by clicking on the lesson title (underlined in orange),
- get to the next lesson item by clicking on it in the lesson menu (lesson items have an orange dot to the left)
NOTE: You can re-watch/read/practice any of the lesson items as many times as you want. - access a transcript of the video, if the lesson item is a video (circled in orange)
NOTE: For lesson project items, they also have a tab (like transcript) called “Documentation” which will let you reference how code needs to be written for it to work.
Tips
- We will not see your progress in the Khan Academy work- this tutorial is designed to give you an example of the kind of content (online, self-directed programming learning) and time commitment (15-20 hrs per week) you can expect in a Code the Dream class.
- If you already have some programming background, you might want to look at the Part 2: Demonstration instructions first (see below).
- Pay special attention to the lessons that deal with the elements you are required to include in your pre-work assignment, including:
- a unique function
- a conditional (IF statement)
- a loop
- Within the Khan Academy, you ONLY need to complete Unit 1: Intro to JS Drawing & Animation. You do not need to proceed to further units like HTML/CSS unless you want to.
- However, once you complete Unit 1, YOU ARE NOT FINISHED! Now comes the most important part: you have to actually write your own code using what you have learned and submit it to us.
- When you submit your assignment (see next section), you will be submitting it in a different program called p5.js, not in Khan Academy. P5.js uses very similar programming libraries to the Khan Academy coding environment, so it should be a relatively smooth transition, but it is not exactly the same.
