Apple Summer Coding School - Day 2

Apple: Presentation by Jessica Grauds, apple accessibility - iOS and diversity

This presentation focused primarily on accessibility and all the features available on
an Apple ipad.

Designing for the margins = completely accessible and ready to use. Switch control - allows access to device with a single switch. Uses 3rd party bluetooth switches. Allows accessibility for disabled people. Online accessibility is empowering for all as personal voice is equal to all. When accessibility option is available for those who need it, it benefits all.

Stella Young - champion for accessibility for disability. Believed in a societal model of

disability. Stairs or ramps?

A11Y - A community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier.

Supporting all learners - lesson design - Michelle Heath and Mel Isaacs

LBA - life before apple

Huge diversity of learners in every class.

Makes comparison between 2 diff types of learners.

Student A: very talkative, bright but performs poorly academically

Student B: very bright, high achiever, lacks friends

iBooks - Learn to code 1 & 2 - loops lesson

Identify areas in the literacy space that will be challenging for students

Challenges (how to help students)

Literacy - heading of text up or a pic for visuals, students brainstorm possible words,
teacher reads text, students tick off what they hear. SwP: kids can look out for certain
words and focus on what it means e.g. function or loop. Voice function that reads text
for students, speech mode, speak selection.

Numeracy - learning about angles etc, x tables link to for loops

Computational thinking - masking tape on floor to replicate SwP world, physically
move around maze/floor grid. Use lego to physically create maze. Remind students that
Bytes world can be spun around.

App Prototyping - Mel Isaacs

Students can start to build own world after learn to code book 2

Apps are developed for a particular purpose.

Audience - apps are developed for specific audiences. Who is my audience? Characteristics? For young students - need to think about peers and teacher as audience

A well designed UI (User interface) makes for a good UX (User experience)

Student task: developing a watch face

60 sec prototyping: WWDC17

Prototypes can be tested to try out ideas, saves time and money, ensures that you are
building the right thing. Get new ideas, diagrams to show to people then learn from the
feedback. Can use Keynote to develop app. Test it. Feedback. How can we make it better. Opens up lots of interesting design questions. Whats working? Whats not?

WWDC 2017 videos

Hackathons and Game James in the Classroom - Sarah Geek Girl

Warm up activity: Pair up, 1, 2, 3 game. Then click finger in place of number one

Later replace number two with a feet stomp

This activity can be used in class to encourage participation

SheHacks event.

Friendship is the core way to build things together.

Hacking is Creative Problem Solving. Everyone pitches an idea. Best ideas are picked and groups are formed to work on the idea selected. Teams consist of a hipster (designer), hacker (developer), hustler (marketer)

Idea: that the thing you are learning is the chance to work and collaborate as part of a
team to design and create something.

Clear communication is important.

Day two of the workshop covered a lot of topics. I found the app prototyping presentation quite useful as I will try it out with my class as a class project. I am also interested in hosting and running a 'Hackathon' at our school. Later in the evening we all went to the Apple Headquarters in Sydney. We met with a panel of amazing female experts from Apple and from UTS who talked about their experiences. It was a privilege to listen to them and gain an insight into their jobs, experiences and the fact that there are so few women in the STEM and IT industry.

Apple Women Leading Learning: Coding Summer School Day 1

The Apple coding workshop was held at the UTS (University of Technology Sydney) building in Sydney. We started with a presentation about why we should teach coding.

Coding inspires creation. It’s about harnessing the power and put into hands of students

We briefly looked at the Swift Playground app and met some of the Apple presenters.

Apple Education and Girl Geek Academy

Why teach coding?
Coding is a learnable skill, Jobs and careers, To change the world, Empowerment

Very often there are incredible gains to be made from technology.

We are expert users of programmes that someone else has written - people doing
programming were actually holding power over what we do.

Coding provides opportunities for people to create own apps and programmes

Students need opportunity to create their own programmes/apps

Focus of workshop: how to become great leaders in delivering coding programme

How to deliver/sell importance of programme to school and staff

Girl Geek - Sarah CEO

Female leaders

She-Hacks - female only hackathon

MissMakesCode

SheMakesGames

Barriers for women in tech

Women are not recruited as much

Women have access to fewer resources

Girls are not encouraged to enter STEM subjects

Gender equality problem

Attitudes are a barrier

Under representation of girls in IT jobs

Influence of parents

Teacher gender biases

Career advice

How to change this?

Building self efficacy in girls
Use of positive language to build confidence in girls

Women tend to underestimate their skills compared to men

Sphero: can be programmed to respond in a unique environment

Computational participation - capacity to work collaboratively, explain ideas and
thinking with other people

Ways of thinking with Sphero

How does it impact on what we are about to undertake?

Value of activity in real world?

3 Types of Thinking:

Design Thinking

Computational Thinking

Systems Thinking

Practiced using Sphero and ipad in small groups of 3-4

Increasing speed = further distance because of velocity

Purpose: why use sphero? Connect its relation to real world/industry

Sphero

Wait = length of time ball rolls in direction set previously

Stop = ball fully stops to allow for the sharp turn/angle

What is Swift? Easy to use, Interactive, Powerful, Open-source

Building lessons/tutorials

Swift Playgrounds (Lou and Michelle)

Before using spheros, need to have a foundation so don’t use as a starting point for kids.

Suits students between 11-15 years of age.

Moving beyond block based coding, lots of primary schools using Scratch

Swift playgrounds sits in between block based programming and XCode - app depth

What app would you create if you could create an app?

Coding language is unpacked through learning to code 1 module

Common language

Do learning to code 1 before trying ‘challenges’

Accessories - more games to try

Accessibility tool - turn on speaker/voice for sound for kids with poor English/low reading
age (settings, general, accessibility, speak selection and speak screen)

Learn to Code 1&2 Teacher Guide:

Y6-8

45 hrs of lessons

Macarena example

Who knows a dance?

How is this related to functions and loops?

Look at important vocab - put up on wall to display

Get kids to write up what they think word means

Startups with Sara (Girl Geek Academy)

Startups are about growth, scalable solutions - very big user audience e.g. airbnb,
instagram etc

Hacker - person who can code, engineer (computational thinking)

Hipster - Make things look good (design thinking)

Hustler - Make things happen, makes sure business can flourish, (systems thinking)

These qualities fit into the digital technology part of the Australian curriculum. In NZ there
is more of a focus on computational thinking and design thinking (I think)

Apple Women Leading Learning: Coding Summer School

I was given the amazing opportunity to attend the Apple Women Leading Learning:
Coding Summer School in Sydney during the School holidays. I applied sometime during
March of 2017. I received confirmation that I had been accepted at the end of Term 3 of
2017. This was an exciting opportunity to find out more about coding with Swift Playgrounds.

I arrived in Sydney on Tuesday 16th January 2018. I met with my roommate Sylvie from
Ormiston Junior College in Auckland. Apparently there were only 4 women from NZ
attending and the rest were teachers from across Australia. That evening the entire group
met for the first time at the Apple Headquarters in Sydney. We also got the chance to
meet with the amazing women involved in organising this event. A few key people from
Apple delivered a presentation about Apple products and talked about how students are
being taught how to code and create apps. Later in the evening we all got the chance to
mix and mingle and meet all the other teachers who were invited to be part of this program.