Summary
I recorded this session to communicate upcoming course logistics, outline a major Socratic seminar project, and walk the class through a hands‑on Python coding exercise in Google Colab. First, I announced that the field trip will be offered on two possible dates (Wednesday, April 8, or the following Friday). Students must sign up on the shared sheet, and anyone who cannot attend is required to watch the recorded lecture on Canvas to stay current. Next, I detailed the Socratic seminar assignment. Each student must select a unique topic that connects to our course material, obtain approval, and gather at least five scholarly sources that include figures. An annotated bibliography is due two days before the student’s presentation, and all proposals are submitted simultaneously. The presentation consists of a 3‑4 minute introduction (topic, significance, opposing views), a central question, and a 10‑11 minute peer‑facilitated discussion. Grading is weighted 70 % for presentation quality and 30 % for facilitation and group engagement; no scripted text is allowed. I emphasized that flexibility in bibliography deadlines depends on a student’s presentation order.
After the administrative updates, I shifted to coding. I demonstrated how to resolve input‑cell execution order in Colab, fix NameError by defining variables before use, and convert input strings to integers or floats. I guided the class through building an age‑calculator (2026 – birthYear) and a simple coffee‑shop receipt program that uses f‑strings and triple‑quoted multi‑line strings for formatted output. I highlighted common pitfalls such as missing the leading ‘f’ in f‑strings and undefined variables. Finally, I introduced functions: I wrote a def calculate_total(price_per_cup, num_cups): that returns the product of its parameters, stressing that functions should return values rather than print them. I reminded students to run the first three notebook cells in sequence before invoking grader.check. The next steps are to sign up for the field trip, watch any missed lecture, submit the seminar topic proposal and annotated bibliography on schedule, prepare the 1‑hour presentation, and complete the coding exercises by fixing errors, using proper input casting, and implementing the calculate_total function.