teach42morrow: swift playgrounds

Showing posts with label swift playgrounds. Show all posts

Monday, January 6, 2020

ESU 8 App Design Challenge Day

On December 10, 2019, ten teams of middle school students from ESU 8 schools put their minds to work designing app prototypes for community challenges.

We started the day with a kick-off on the power of learning to code.

Every student accessed an App Design Journal (in Keynote) and began customizing their journal to document their journey.

We utilized Challenge Based Learning as a framework for our day's learning. An overarching challenge "Use app design to solve a community challenge" was presented.

Then three community experts presented Big Ideas & Community Challenges for the student teams to ponder.

Teams each decided on which Big Idea/Challenge they would take on and immediately got busy investigating through guiding questions and activities.

One of the coolest things learned was how easy it can be to create an app prototype in Keynote. After watching this app developer share his WWDC presentation, teams quickly started creating app prototype design plans, storyboards, and hyperlinked Keynote slides to showcase the main features of their thinking.

The day was culminated with an App Showcase where teams presented their app prototype in rotations sharing a 3 minute pitch and time for feedback from visitors. During round 1 half of the teams presented three different times, while the other half of the teams served as feedback givers. Then in round 2 the roles were reversed. ESU 8 professionals joined the app showcase and were impressed by the ideas and quick turnaround on product by the student teams!

Teachers and students alike were anxious to get back to their schools and explore coding and app design with even more learners.

https://www.apple.com/education/teaching-code/

A snapshot of an exciting day at ESU 8!

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Hour of Code 2019: Dance Party!

It seems like “DaNcE pArTy” is the common theme to celebrate this year’s Computer Science Education Week (otherwise known as “Hour of Code”)!

December 9-15, 2019 is the official week that is designated as this year’s Computer Science Education Week, but of course you can host an “Hour of Code” ANY TIME with these free resources:

From Code.org:

Say hello to Dance Party 2019
With the Hour of Code only a few weeks away, we’re excited to unveil the latest additions to one of our most popular activities, Dance Party! You can look forward to new backgrounds, new coding blocks, and new music from artists like Lil Nas X, Nicki Minaj, Panic! At The Disco, Jonas Brothers, Pedro Capó, and Katy Perry. There’s even a brand-new Dance Party character designed by middle schooler Genevieve P from Edison, NJ! Read more on our blog.

From Apple’s Everyone Can Code:

Excerpt from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/11/apple-expands-everyone-can-code-to-bring-more-coding-resources-to-teachers-and-students/

"New Everyone Can Code Curriculum

The new Everyone Can Code curriculum builds on existing interactive puzzles, guides and activities to make learning to code even more approachable and connected to students’ everyday lives. Everyone Can Code Puzzles is an all-new student guide to Swift Playgrounds where each chapter helps students build on what they already know, experiment with new coding concepts and creatively communicate how coding impacts their lives. A companion teacher guide supports educators in bringing coding into their classrooms with helpful ways to facilitate, deepen and assess student learning.”

This year’s Hour of Code Facilitator Guide features Dance as students program a virtual MeeBot character to dance and then make a video of it. The new Swift Playground activities to accompany this activity are featured in the Swift Playgrounds library. You could even purchase an actual robot that you could build and then program to interact with your code. Even without this purchase, students can have hours of coding fun with dance moves and the virtual robot inside of Swift Playgrounds.

And so, Let’s Dance with Code!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Everyone Can Code!

Everyone Can Code!

an ESU 8 Wednesday Webinar from Katie Morrow

Everyone Can Code is an initiative recently launched by Apple to make coding with the Swift programming language even more accessible to all. Learn about Swift Playgrounds, a free app designed for middle schoolers on up, accompanying Teacher’s Guide, and related resources to give even novices more opportunities to reach students interested in coding.

View the webinar here

and check out the Links and Resources below:

Everyone Can Code (and Swift Playgrounds)

Wednesday Webinar 10-5-16

Katie Morrow, ESU 8