Technical TA

Technical Content

On completion of the “Intro to Digital” course, applicants should have learnt:

  • General digital skills such as how to search and how to find useful resources.

  • How to build a website from scratch by using the fundamentals of HTML and CSS, including:

    • HTML Basics: introduction, document structure, formatting, lines & comments, elements, attributes, images, links, lists, tables, forms and input, frames.

    • HTML5: content models, page structure, header, nav & footer, audio and video elements, animation and canvas.

    • CSS Basics: text, properties, positioning and layout, CSS3, gradients and backgrounds, transitioning & transforms, CSS filter

What have they been working on?

The content in “Intro to Coding” is a steps based process.

There are 5 steps to complete.

Applicants are first invited to do two tutorials on the app Grasshopper, this is available on either mobile or desktop so anyone can access the courses. The students must then build and deploy five static websites on Netlify with Scrimba. Once completed students move on to building a personal homepage on Codepen which has Jest tests they must interpret and pass.

Post-Course Content (to be updated)

After completion of the course we provide the students with a resource pack which includes

  • Where to go to find more learning resources

  • Schemes in their city where they can get more help

  • Our recommendations for further learning

Running a workshop

The technical content of the comes in two blocks. These sessions are designed to give the students the opportunity to work through problems, ask questions and help each other. Following an introduction to the session by the lead instructor the class will split into break-out groups with a TA per group (the groups will be divided depending on how far students have progressed with the course). The TAs should encourage students to discuss the challenges they’ve come across, share solutions with each other and work together . The TA can offer guidance and advice when needed but should always try to encourage students to solve questions first.

N.B. Screen Sharing is a powerful tool. Encourage your students to share their screen to illustrate a challenge and share your screen when demonstrating a concept.

Breakout rooms

Whilst in breakout rooms TAs will be responsible for supporting a small group of students who should have reached a similar step in the course (If a student is at a different step to the group then the zoom admin should be alerted so that the student can be reassigned to a more appropriate room). The rooms will be divided as follows:

Students who have registered and not progressed on the course content and need support getting started.

New students who have not signed up need volunteers to help them with the registration process.

More resources are being made available in the following pages for Tech TAs depending on which group they are running. For any further questions, please ask the Lead Instructor as seen on the schedule.

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