October 2020 < Page 2 of 2

EU Code Week: Here at Last!

(Screenshot taken the night before, obviously!)

Well, today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for, the start of EU Code Week (well, for us)!

Join us LIVE, today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time!

Day One: Meet Byte

Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we’ll meet Byte today on Swift Playgrounds and learn a little bit about commands, the building block in our programming toolbox.

We’ve got origami paper dancers, we’ve got all kinds of stuff for you!

So bring your crayons, your problem-solving skills, a couple pieces of paper, and your coding fingers, because you’re going to need all of that and more tomorrow.

Logging On

At 9:45am we’ll kick things off on the YouTube channel, just follow the link at https://www.thecodehub.ie/live/ and it’ll take care of the rest. If you have questions, make sure you or someone you can bother to ask questions has a YouTube account.

We’ll spend the first 10 minutes on unplugged activities. Then we’ll move to the iPad and get some coding done.

But we will definitely and without a doubt, get to questions at the end.

I’ve discussed the material we’ll be covering ad nauseam, but you can get the PDF we’re working from at http://apple.co/quickstartcode_UK. The mini-site also has a breakdown of all the things we’ll be doing today.

I’m very excited that you’ll be joining us for EU Code Week in some shape or form, and we’ll see you on the live feed!

EU Code Week: Day One, We Begin!

Are you ready for some coding?

Monday morning we’ll be kicking off our Follow-Along Coding sessions with Swift and iPads!

We’ve got a really fun session lined up.

The Theme

The theme today is all about commands and introducing you to Swift Playgrounds.

We’ll meet Byte, our coding buddy throughout Learn to Code 1 and 2.

But before we jump straight into coding, we’ll do something away from the screen for a second.

Unplugged

Steve has an amazing unplugged activity in store for you: origami paper dancer.

We use these ‘unplugged’ activities as ways of introducing computational thinking and computational concepts without even using screens or devices. So if you don’t have iPads for everyone, or maybe the kids need a break, these activities get you up out of your chair and interacting with your classmates.

Coding

You’ll need Swift Playgrounds and the Learn to Code 1 playground on your iPad to follow along with the code. You can see how to download all of these things in our video, “How to prepare for Quick Start to Code for EU Code Week.”

We’ll walk through these early pages with you on Monday morning.

I can’t wait to get started coding with you and I hope you’re excited, too.

You can find out all the gory details on our mini-site for day one, and we’ll see you online!

We’ll be live on Monday morning from https://www.thecodehub.ie/live/.

EU Code Week: Coping!

EU Code Week is nearly upon us and I’m sure, for many of you, your head has been all over the place this school year!

This surely has been an unprecedented return to school, and our sessions being online this year are a testament to that.

Running these Sessions in Class

With all the craziness, we understand that you may not get to log in exactly at 9:45am (Irish/UK time) and spend 45 glorious minutes learning about unplugged activities and coding in Swift Playgrounds.

Looking at Dalkey Island from Loreto Abbey Secondary School in Dalkey, Ireland

It’s been a hectic autumn and I have no doubt many of you are working on coping, never mind coding!

These sessions are designed to put your mind at ease and introduce your students to coding in an easy and engaging manner. But we’re not just focused on the coding piece.

In terms of running these sessions in your classroom, if you’re wrestling with WiFi availability, having to wear masks or not wear masks, struggling with keeping the rooms clean and together, you don’t have to run them live with us.

Sure, it’s an added bonus if you can, because you could ask questions if they arise in near real-time. But if you want to introduce coding to your students outside of the hours we’re running the sessions, we’ll post the recording from that day’s session to the relevant page on the mini-site.

EU Code Week Video Playlist

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve posted a playlist page, which will also have all of the sessions we record for you to play back at your leisure, either in class, or to have your students with their own iPads to try at home.

Whatever way you join us, I can’t wait to show you some of the cool stuff you can do with your students (or for yourself!) with Swift Playgrounds.

EU Code Week: Catch Up and Get Ready

So our “How to” session is in the books. If you didn’t manage to catch our live session, you can watch the recording.

We covered the rough outline of the sessions, what will happen each day and also what’ll happen each of the five weekdays.

Daily Format

Each day we’ll start with:

a little intro to the session, and then…
Steve will launch into the unplugged session, followed by
some coding on the iPad, finished off with
a Q & A session

Our guest schools will make an appearance in there in one of the segments.

To help you manage your time, if you’re following along in a classroom, we’ll have a countdown timer in the lower right hand corner of the screen, so you know when we’re nearly finished a segment.

Weekly Format

For the week, we’ll be following select days from the A Quick Start to Code PDF from Apple.

Monday, we’ll Meet Byte (commands)
Tuesday, we’ll Get groovy (functions)
Wednesday, it’s time to Get loopy (loops)
Thursday, we Track the gems (variables)
Friday, we Play our own game (putting it all together)

Where

All this will be appearing on YouTube, where we’ll be live streaming each morning at 9:45am, Irish/UK time.

If you missed the setup session, or any sessions, you can catch up on our playlist page, where we’ll keep all of our sessions, including the set up ones, for EU Code Week.

Grab some popcorn, catch up, and we’ll see you Monday morning!

EU Code Week: Let’s Go, Teachers!

Here we go, EU Code Week begins early!

We’ll be live today at 4pm, Irish/UK time, talking about how to host these coding sessions in your own classroom.

You can still register, though it’s not necessary: https://ti.to/the-code-hub/quick-start-to-code-follow-along-how-to-use-these-sessions.

A Smooth Sailing

The goal of today’s session is to answer any questions you might have about the coding sessions. We’ll cover how to teach them in class, what gotchas to look out for, and when we’ll be live.

Of course, we have the mini-site, which we’ll show off, but it’s always helpful to have a guide along with you.

No matter the level of coding experience you or your students have, we’ll explain what material we have to offer, and how to tailor it to your experience level. We have ways to challenge advanced students, and ‘unplugged’ sessions to bring computing concepts home in a tactile way.

The Place and Time for Questions

We’ll have time during our live follow-along coding sessions, but tomorrow is just for the teachers. Do you have questions about running this in class? What do you need? How long should you budget? Will you be able to follow along?

We’ll address all of those questions tomorrow (but the short answers are: iPads, 45 minutes or so, yes, definitely), and any others you might have.

So grab a cup of tea or coffee after school, hit up https://youtu.be/CxKrMvkpJbs, and we’ll give you the inside scoop on how you can get your class coding for EU Code Week.

EU Code Week: Get Your iPad Set Up

By now, you know EU Code Week is coming, you can feel it like a train coming down the tracks.

In order to help you get set up in advance, I’ve made a short video (6 minutes) to help you make sure you have all you need on your iPad to follow-along with us as we code each day of the week.

The video is called “How to prepare for Quick Start to Code for EU Code Week” and you can watch it at that URL above or inline, below:

For Teachers

Now, if you’re a teacher, running this in class during EU Code Week (or at a later date), you’ll want to do the above for you and your students, for sure. But there might be other things you need to set up. Or to understand about the session to be ready for anything.

If so, feel free to come along to our session on October 6th at 4pm, Irish/UK time! Just register here, and join us on the live stream at 4pm on Tuesday at https://youtu.be/CxKrMvkpJbs.

Registration and attendance are free and we’ll focus on what you need to run these sessions in class.

You’ll have the chance to ask questions via the live chat in YouTube.

Different Learning Styles

Maybe video isn’t your thing. If so, you can also read instructions for setting up your class or your home for the sessions.

The big kick-off is Monday, October 12th at 9:45am. We’ll see you then!