Welcome

Thank you for taking the time to explore the TechSmart Teacher Demo! This guide is designed to help you get a very high level overview of the functionality and navigation within the TechSmart Platform to enable you to get the most out of your time exploring this demo course.

This guide assumes no prior knowledge of Python coding, so even if you are brand new to coding you should be able to explore the basic functionality of the TechSmart Platform and get a general understanding of the pedagogy and tools behind the activities we will be looking at during this guide.

Please note that we will cover all of the coding concepts and skills that you see in this demo course in much more detail during the Teacher Coding Bootcamp professional learning to prepare you to teach this course!

How to use this guide:

1. Read through the details of each section to learn in-depth about that part of the TechSmart Platform or Curriculum.
2. When you get to the short interactive demo (👇) click through it by clicking on the pulsing circle indicators
   • Purple indicators is something to try yourself when in the TechSmart Platform
     
   • Green indicators provide some key information to know while going through the TechSmart Platform. 
     
3. When you have finished clicking through the short interactive demo, in most of the demo's you will see a message appear with "Hooray!" and a "Try it in the TechSmart Platform" button. Click the "Try it in the TechSmart Platform" button to open a link to the TechSmart Platform to try it for yourself.
   
   
   
   • If at any time you want to go through the interactive demo again you can click "Replay demo"
     
4. After clicking "Try it in the TechSmart Platform" you will be taken to the TechSmart Platform where you will want to complete the Goal in the 👉 section. 

In this guide, you will learn how to:

• Log in to your Demo TechSmart Platform teacher account
• Navigate the calendar in the TechSmart Teaching Platform
• Learn about the typical activity sequence for a lesson in the High School Python curriculum. 
• Explore the following activity types further to see what teaching tools are available: 
  • Instruction Activities
  • Coding Exercises

Logging into your demo account

Let's get started by logging in to the TechSmart Platform!

Your username and password for your demo account was provided in an email.

👇 See how to sign-in to the TechSmart Platform

👉 Try It in the TechSmart Platform

Goal: Sign in to the TechSmart Platform. 

Lesson Plan Navigation

What is the Lesson Plan?

The Lesson Plan Week View provides you with a visual layout of the lesson plan for the week. It shows the learning trajectory for the lesson. The Lesson Plan Week View is divided into two sections:

• Classwork - in class lesson activities laid out on a time scale
• Homework - lesson activities to be completed outside of class, you can choose to move homework to the Classwork section instead if you prefer

👇 See how to navigate the Lesson Plan in this interactive demo

👉 Try It in the TechSmart Platform

Goal: Navigate to 2.1 If Statements (Oct 11 - Oct 18, 2021) using the date picker

Lesson Sequence

Each Coding Lesson generally includes the following sequence of activities:

Instruction → Instruction Practice → Coding Techniques → Coding Exercises

There are other lessons such as Industry Practices or Research Questions that don’t follow this exact format. 

👇 See the various activity types in a lesson

Instruction

Each Coding Lesson has 1-2 Instruction activities at the start of the Lesson. Instructions are led by the teacher and introduce the concepts for the Lesson in a format that starts with a non-coding activity, learn the concept, then explore the concept further.

👇 See how to open an activity and what tools are used in an Instruction

👉 Explore the 2.1 If Statements Instruction

Goal:

1. Open the 2.1 if Statements Instructions on 10/22/21.
2. Navigate to Slide 2 and read the Slide Notes and Code Instructions.
3. Navigate to Slide 9 and try to complete the Code Instructions on the part_3_us_states.py file. 
4. Navigate to Slide 10 and read the Slide Notes and Code Instructions.

Coding Exercises

Each Coding Lesson includes two Coding Exercises. There are 30 Coding Exercises in the course and each Coding Exercise consists of a planning and coding component. Following the best practices of professional software developers, each Coding Exercise starts with a Planning activity so that students can see what the final program is supposed to do, then analyze and plan their program before they start writing their code. The Coding activity follows the Planning activity where students work independently, in pairs, or small groups to code the activity. The Planning activity takes about 20 minutes and the Coding activity ranges from 25-40 minutes. The Coding Exercises encompass the CS concepts and coding techniques introduced in the lesson.

👇 See what tools are used in a Coding Exercise

👉 Explore the Target Practice Coding Exercise

Goal:

1. Open the Target Practice Coding Exercise on 10/22/21.
2. Run the Solution for Target Practice via the "Run Solution" button in the Assignment Panel.
3. View some of the Teach Assist content by clicking on the beacons (circles) next to the line numbers in the code editor. 
4. View the Solution code for the activity by switching to the Solution in the Project Panel. 

👉 Explore other lessons and activities!

Now that you have gone through some of the basics of navigating the Lesson Plan and going through some of the activities, you can the rest of this course. Here are links to a of couple lessons that we suggest: 

• Go to the start of the Course (Note that the start of the course is Sep 7th, 2021)
• 2.3 Built-in Libraries on Nov 1 - 5, 2021
• 3.1 While Loops on Nov 30 - Dec 6, 2021