Online Community [link] - Want to ask a question or pose a lesson idea for other Bootstrap teachers? Want to be kept up-to-date about Bootstrap events, workshops, and curricular changes? Our new discussion forum is the place to do it. If you're a Bootstrap veteran, the old google group is still available.
Teacher’s Guide [html] - a "quick start" reference to all the various functionality in the Game Template. You can also check out an advanced game that uses some of the features of the supplemental lessons, including 2d-motion and multiple dangers and targets.
Workbook Solutions [pdf] - completed exercises for the entire Student Workbook.
Workshop Slides [ppt] - The slide deck we use in our PD workshops, in PowerPoint format. This includes the background and context slides, as well as all slides used during the sample-teaching session.
Lesson Videos [YouTube | TeacherTube] - You can watch excerpts from some of our units here.
Assessment Guide [Google Doc] - Guidance for teachers, on assessing student programs.
Grading Rubric [Google Doc] - A simple grading rubric for Design Recipes in Bootstrap:Algebra.
[NEW!] Buggy Design Recipes [PDF] [ Answer key] - Real examples of common student mistakes. Get some practice grading them, or practice getting students over common misconceptions.
Evaluation
As a member of the Bootstrap Community, we invite you and your class to join our research effort! You'll help us investigate the effectiveness of our curriculum, which helps us improve our existing materials and pedagogy for both students and teachers. In exchange for participation, you'll receive a choice of a $50 Amazon gift card or up to 50 FREE student workbooks. We are in particular need of data from control classes that have not used Bootstrap. If you are able to gather data in a similar class to your Bootstrap class, we can offer an additional $50 gift card of set of 50 workbooks.
Participation is easy: fill this google form. After you submit, you'll get links to the pre and post tests for your students. The links also include a parental consent form that you can use if your district requires it (Bootstrap does not require the consent forms). Have your students fill out the pre-test before they start Bootstrap, and the post-test when you are done teaching Bootstrap.
There are two pairs of pre/post tests: one on word problems and one on understanding variables. You may give either or both (we are particularly interested in more data on the variables tests). Both tests are available as online surveys or as paper PDFs. Please use the same format (paper or online) for both pre and post test. Please don't switch topics from pre-to-post -- we need to look at changes on the same kinds of problems in our evaluation.
For either format and topic, students will be asked to use some ID number across all tests (so we can match the pre and post tests per student). These numbers can be whatever you want as long as each student in your class has a unique ID that (s)he uses on both tests. Having letters in the ID is also fine. Please do NOT use students' names, so we can protect their privacy (the online forms do NOT automatically collect email addresses). This form will ask some basic information about your class(es). We need this information as part of our reporting to the National Science Foundation.
You can also help us evaluate how students react to having built a game by having them fill out this brief (10 minute) anonymous survey. We frequently get questions about whether our game project allows enough creativity (and whether it appeals to girls) -- this data helps us assess and answer such questions. (Note: there is no compensation for the online survey)
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