facilitating a cyber-dojo tips

When I'm facilitating a cyber-dojo with a new group here's how I typically start:

1. I suggest that developers habits and thinking is strongly influenced by their development environments. If you use Eclipse to develop software then when you use Eclipse your default mentality is one of development. Not practising. Since we're practising, we deliberately don't use a development environment.
2. I point out that cyber-dojo is not a personal development environment, it's a shared practice environment. In a development environment it makes sense to have tools such as colour syntax highlighting and code-completion to help you go faster so you can ship sooner. In a practice environment it doesn't. When you're practising you don't want to go faster, since you're not shipping anything. You want to go slower. You want your practice to be more deliberate.
3. I observe that since it is so different to a development environment, participants may feel some slight discomfort when first using cyber-dojo. This discomfort is also deliberate! Discomfort can bring learning opportunities.
4. I do a short demo explaining...
   • the files on the left side
   • the initial source files bear no relation to the exercise
   • the test button
   • the output file
   • the meaning of the red, amber, green traffic lights
5. I ask the participants to enter their dojo in pairs. Pairing is an important part of the learning. Occasionally a few choose not to pair (and that's fine) but most do.