Teaching

Ancient Brain has support for teaching programming classes, whether introduction to coding for schoolkids, or advanced programming in graphics and AI for university students. Coding is in JavaScript.



Register a class

Step one is to bulk register a class using the following:
Register a class


Teacher and Student accounts

When you register a class using the link above, you get special "Teacher" and "Student" accounts with certain properties.

First note that:

"Teacher" and "Student" accounts are different:

Marking student programs when you can edit them is fun:





Ancient Brain support for teaching

Ancient Brain features that support teachers and students:

3D graphics
The site, and its JavaScript libraries, support advanced 3D graphics. Even a simple programming problem can easily be situated inside an attractive 3D graphical World, making the practical engaging for your students.

Students can upload custom images, audio
Students can upload their own images to use in their JavaScript graphics "World". They can upload music and sound effects, and many other customisations. This helps give them ownership of and pride in their creations.

Students can show off their work
Student work is not confined to college computers. Students can show off their work to their parents and others at home and on mobile. It is at a hidden URL, but visible when the student logs in. The student can also tell their parents the URL. We want to encourage students to be proud of their work and show it off at home.

Online submission
Online submission by the students. No forms for you to manage. No email. No paper.

Student code hidden
Student code is hidden from other students (but visible to you).

Teacher can see everything
As the teacher, you can see your students' code. You have a dashboard where you see all their submissions.

No risk to your computer
When running student submissions, there is no risk to your computer. There is no install. There is no cleanup afterwards.

Automatic marking
If you set up a World-Mind type problem, you get an online scoreboard with automatic marking. You run students' code and their score on the problem is automatically filled in.

Teacher can search all class code
The menu bar has JS code search to search all visible code on the site. As the teacher, you can search for any string in the code of all of your students. Making it easy to track down copying. Your students cannot search the code of the class. They can only search their own code and the code of public Worlds on the site.

Best feature: Edit student code and run again
This is perhaps the best feature. When marking, you can easily edit a student program, make some changes, and run it again to see what happens. All with no install and no risk to your computer. You can even bug fix student code. Few teachers ever edit a student program and run it again, because it is usually not practical. This system aims to change that, and make it easy and even fun to do.