Getting Started

This page assumes your account is set up for lesson authoring. If you'd like to become a lesson author, please contact us at accounts@manylabs.org.

Creating a Lesson

1. In the Dashboards section, click Editor.
2. Click the Add button at the bottom of the Edit My Lessons list. This will take you to the main lesson editor page for your new lesson.
3. Enter a title for your lesson in the Title field. The title will be displayed to students and will show in your list of lessons.
4. In the Categories field, enter the subject of your lesson in all lowercase, such as biology, physics, or math. If multiple subjects are appropriate, separate them with commas and no spaces. Example: physics,math
5. Your user name is automatically entered in the Edit Users and View Users fields. If you would like another teacher to be able to view your lesson, add his or her user name to the View Users field. If you would like another teacher to be able to edit your lesson, add his or her user name to the Edit Users field. In either case, use all lowercase and separate user names with commas and no spaces. Example: peter,heather
6. In the Descriptions field, enter a brief description of your lesson. This description will be visible to other teachers once your lesson has been published.
7. In the Requirements field, enter any additional materials that are required for your lesson. For example, if a teacher will need scissors for each student, or a light sensor for the class, list those items here.

Building a Lesson

1. A lesson is constructed using a set of templates. Press Add Basic Template. You now have a new template in your list of templates.
2. Move your mouse over the new template and click the Nodes button. You are now viewing the template represented as a collection of nodes.
3. Find the TextNode on the left side of the page. Drag this into the center of the page to add it to your template. (You may need to scroll up after dragging it in the center of the page.)
4. Each node has a set of attributes. Find the text attribute of the new TextNode. Enter "Hello World" for the text attribute.
5. Click the Build button at the top of the page.
6. If the build is successful, you will see a preview here link. Click that link to see the lesson in action.
7. To learn about the other node types, refer to the block type documentation. You can also visit the block type example lesson

Advanced Authoring

1. Once you are comfortable with the lesson editor, you will probably want to switch to the text-based editor. To access this, click the Code button on a template item.
   See the template language introduction.
2. Once you are comfortable with the text-based editor, you may want to write custom code. See the programmer introduction for more information.

Adding a Badge to a Lesson

A badge is a 250x250 pixel image to be publicly displayed with your lesson. Once a student completes the lesson, they will earn the badge.

1. Create a 250x250 pixel image. To do this, you can take a screenshot of your lesson and crop it to the appropriate size.
2. Title the file "badge". For example, for a jpeg, the file would be called badge.jpg.
3. In the Files section of the lesson editor, click the Upload Files button.
4. Click Browse and select the image to upload.
5. Click the Upload button.
6. The file should now appear in your Files list.

Publishing a Lesson

Once your lesson finalized and is ready to be published, click the Publish button in the upper right corner of the lesson editor page.