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)