You should take a look at this starter kit if you'd like to learn about our intentions at Gimbalabs, or if you're thinking about contributing your own Cardano Starter Kit!
- What is the motivation behind Cardano Starter Kits?
- Why should I make a Cardano Starter Kit?
- What are the components of a Cardano Starter Kit?
- How do I make one?
- I understand the purpose of Cardano Starter Kits.
- I understand the education design principles behind Cardano Starter Kits.
- I can explain why context and schema help drive adoption of new technology.
Want to help craft Learning Targets that will define our roadmap for future CSKs? Let us know here!.
At the end of this starter kit, you will:
- Have ideas for future starter kits and how you might contribute.
- Be ready to create your own starter kit.
In order to solve the world's most challenging problems, we're going to need an unprecedented number of people collaborating in unprecedented ways, and we believe that Cardano provides tools and opportunities for people to solve problems in new ways.
Cardano Starter Kits exist because people learn best through experience. The roll-out of Cardano comes with so many possibilities that it's hard to even make sense of everything it can do.
That is why we emphasize context. Knowledge will always be essential, and in order to use it, we must be able to incorporate it into the web of what we already know. That process is called sense-making; our webs of knowledge are called schema.
One of the best ways to facilitate sense-making and schema-building is to expose people to problems in a real-world context, and to equip people to try to solve those problems on their own. Gimbalabs seeks to help people build rich schema for what Cardano can do by providing context through project-based, experiential learning. You should make a Cardano Starter Kit if you know a way to help people on that journey.
Here are some specific examples:
- You can provide context that helps people make sense of technical documentation so that they can then dive deeper on their own. Perhaps you've read official docs and experienced some pain points, so now you're ready to help people navigate the same.
- You've built a tool that can support others to build on Cardano and you want to show how it works, so that others can start using it.
- Through your experience with Cardano you've developed insights that might help someone else get started on their own learning journey, and you can share these in a way that facilitates experiential, project- and problem-based learning
- You have an idea for how to expose end users to what Cardano can do
- You have an idea for how to show experienced devs what Cardano can do
- Note that some CSKs will focus more on devs, some on end-users, and others will address both audiences - you decide!
In all cases, starter kits are designed to provide a starting point. As such, they should define next steps, calls to action, and further reading.
You might have additional ideas for how to define what a CSK is. We are starting here, and we're eager to collaborate on all aspects of how to make CSKs as impactful as possible.
- Guiding questions, Learning Targets and Outcomes as modeled above
- Video lessons with time-stamped links
- Written documentation
- Links to additional resources + further reading
- One or more calls to action (these could be different depending on audience)
- Sample code
- Suggested Project-Based Learning tasks
- References to and usage examples for Dandelion's open source APIs
So treat these guidelines as flexible. If you see a better way to get people started in what you're trying to do, we'd love to help you test your ideas.
If you intend to create a Cardano Starter Kit, you probably already have some ideas about what you want to share with other people. Start by summarizing your intentions in a hanful of "guiding questions". If you already have of a lot of ideas, it's fine to jot down an outline at this point, just remember that it's a rough draft.
"The process of learning shouldn’t be a mystery. Learning targets provide students with tangible goals that they can understand and work toward," writes the EL Education team (continue reading here).
Learning Targets are high level goals that might mean different things to different people. Ideally, they should exist independently of any single learning experience (see "What we have" vs. "What we need to have"). If you'd like to help define the roadmap for what Gimbalabs CSKs will cover, let us know on this form.
Outcomes are specific events or moments that should happen as a result of a learning experience. By providing both at the start of a lesson, we are trying to activate the schema of learners.
Think of Learning Targets like a horizon - you can move toward it, but there's always room to learn more. Think of Outcomes as tangible expectations - what, precisely, will someone know and be able to do after looking at this CSK?
Learning targets make room for everyone to do what they can, and for educators to differentiate their approach depending on audience. Outcomes can be consistent for everyone, although they'll likely be met with different degrees of success.
The purpose of a CSK is to get people started on their own learning journey, and outcomes might be different for newcomers to Cardano vs people who want to learn to build with Cardano. We like to think about what each of these groups might get out of a CSK:
- How might a blockchain novice benefit from this CSK? How might this CSK expose an end user to what Cardano can do?
- How might an experienced developer benefit from this CSK? What do you want devs to get out of this CSK?
- Prerequisites - list if any?
- Read, Write, Execute permissions
Optional: Create a table with one row for each Learning Target and a column for each audience segment. In each cell, describe what success would look like?
Now that you've defined your intentions, it's time to outline your CSK. You may have already drafted your outline - now look at it through the lens of your Learning Targets and Outcomes.
How will you move people toward these targets, and how can you increase the likelihood that Outcomes will happen? As you draft your outline, gather relevant links and visual resources. You might decide to use a slide deck or other written documentation to share definitions, diagrams, or ideas. Create these visual resources.
Finally, organize your outline so that there are clear sections. It should feel like you're taking your audience on a journey. Think about how you'll connect the parts of your starter kit into a cohesive narrative.
We are still creating support resources for making videos. If you need help with the technical side of screencasting or recording video, let's talk.
The general idea behind CSK videos is to emphasize approachability and to be as informative as possible. Some tips:
- Show what it looks like to make misktakes.
- When you're showing something complicated, tell stories about what it was like for you to learn it.
- When you make a design choice, talk about it: is it common to go this route? What are some other ways to do it?
- Some of your videos will be emphasize technical training and others will take a bigger picture view. Recognize which is which. In the technical segments, try to stay focused on tech; in other segments, you can be a little looser with the structure.
Once recorded, rendered, and uploaded to your favorite streaming platform, video is the hardest part of a multimedia lesson to change. So once you're happy with the video, plan on building around it. You can make changes to Outcomes + Learning Targets to ensure that they align with your videos.
Did any surprises emerge? Sometimes you won't know some of your key points until you get to teaching. It's ok to adjust your goals and outline to account for this.
As we move toward having a truly dynamic network of learning targets and learning resources, you might choose to reach out to other community members to see how your CSK aligns with others toward delivering on high level goals.
Use the outline you created in Step 4 to create a final draft of written documentation.
As you can see, this written documentation is hosted in a README.md file on GitHub, with links to videos on YouTube (coming soon!)
Use this meta-CSK as a starting point, or review some previous examples here or here to get some ideas for how to structure content. You might choose to include:
- video links + timestamps
- external links
- embedded links to code samples
- step by step call(s) to action
- appropriate level of documentation (this is a moving target, depending on audience)
There are no rules here, because we are still experimenting with how to best support both end users and developers. So play around with format, what you include, etc. We're eager to learn with you.
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