A Rapid Workflow for Publishing CS Teaching Materials

Summary

It is both a feature and a bug of Computer Studies courses that there are few, if any, published textbooks that match the Ontario curriculum. As a result, most teachers write their own materials and have developed a workflow that fits their needs to share lessons and instructions with their students. In this session, the presenter will share a workflow that maximizes time we can spend communicating ideas and minimizes friction and time spent actually publishing and disseminating those materials. Bring your laptop computer: this is a hands-on session where you will set up the complete publishing workflow and learn how to use Markdown-formatted text files to quickly publish code snippets, diagrams, animations, and searchable, deeply linked pages to the web. Break free from manually typesetting documents in HTML or a word processor.

Author

Russell Gordon
Teacher, Lakefield College School

Output examples

A lesson that the author, in the past, might have conveyed using a PDF file (exported from presentation software) or with a video.

An end-of-module task for students to complete to demonstrate learning goal mastery.

A course website (half of the author's ICS3U course from 2022-23).

Resources

• Presentation slides
  • A sparse introduction to the motivation for using this workflow, its benefits, and drawbacks.
• Configure a publishing workflow for a course website:
  1. Publishing Setup
  2. Theming
  3. Screenshots
  4. Diagrams
  5. Using Custom Domains and Subdomains
• Optionally use an existing site template and enable features like site search.
• Explore other features offered by the Digital Garden plugin.
• Things to watch out for over time.
• Authoring and optimizing animations and images.