February 2021 < The Code Hub

Develop All Around – Get Active!

Develop in Swift, all week, every day next week!

I’m busy putting the finishing touches on our Teaching Develop in Swift Online class for next week. It promises to be a week full of Swift coding and app prototyping that you’ll be able to use in your classroom to teach people how to code.

I’m so excited, and if you’re joining us, I hope you are, too.

All Around Skills

But I was reminded this week of how much we’re all sitting in front of these screens, all day, nearly every day. I have two teenagers in secondary school here in Ireland. Their schools are doing an amazing job keeping them learning during these difficult times, but it is a looooooong day in front of an iPad or laptop.

We’ll have the same scenario next week, with our instructors: it’s a lot of hours in front of a screen.

Now, in addition to coding, I love working out, whether it’s playing a sport or exercising to feel more fit.

And during lockdown and before, I work out with a trainer in Ireland named Dominic Munnelly.

This is the Way — https://www.instagram.com/dominicmunnelly/channel/

If you’re looking to make sure you’re developing all your skills, physical as well as mental, you could do a lot worse than working out with him every Monday and Wednesday at 7pm, Irish time. Catch him on his Instagram channel live or watch it back later at your leisure.

Dom’s not paying me to say this, and his sessions on Instagram are free. Even though they say they’re for kids they’re challenging enough for any of us who have been sitting down all day at a computer or device.

You’ll find a good mix of moving your body, a little bit of strength work, and some mobility, to make sure you’re flexible and fit for life, not just for today.

Others

Of course, you might have your favorite workout routine. There’s Joe Wicks and his video series, Swim Ireland are holding live online workouts, Sport Ireland have some awesome family workouts, too.

Just getting away from the screen for a little bit each day will help you clear your mind, shake out the cobwebs, and hopefully improve your mood. The thing I love about all the people I’ve linked above is that they don’t push you past your limits. They all have a sensible approach to getting and keeping fit.

This is just a public service announcement to make sure you’re taking care of yourself both mentally as well as physically.

And we’ll see you out there, coding!

Teaching Develop in Swift – March 2021 Edition

Are you a teacher who is trying to figure out how to teach coding, and app development in particular?

Are you a coder who feels like you could help people learn how to develop apps?

Does this feel like I’m leading you somewhere with all these questions?

Develop in Swift

Well, I am!

I’ll be running a week of intensive training in Teaching Develop in Swift Online with Apple in the first week of March.

We’ll give you a pretty good look at the Develop in Swift curriculum, which is aimed at secondary school to university level students.

They’re a series of free e-books Apple has produced to introduce you to the world of coding using their programming language, Swift. It’s the same coding language folks use to write wildly popular apps for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AppleTV.

Develop in Swift Explorations introduces coding in a broader context. It’s designed to reveal coding to those people who might have never considered all the places we experience code someone else has written. We’ll build some of the projects in this book each day, including the really fun QuestionBot. This will form the basis for a project you can run with your own class.

Develop in Swift Fundamentals is aimed at computer science students (though it’s not limited to them!). It’s like a traditional programming class with 3 more projects to build. We’ll also build these in class during the week. I love that this material teaches you Swift and how to build an app. It’s not just a matter of putting code in the right places, it’s about working with others, coming up with a plan for delivering something.

Develop in Swift Data Collections is the last in the series and covers even more advanced stuff to make your apps look amazing and do incredible stuff.

The Week

We’ll have lectures each day from the material, hands-on workshops on projects from the books in the morning. Some time in the middle to work on projects and get food. Then showcases and group discussions in the afternoon. Each day we’ve got special guests coming to talk to us about design, technical topics, or the books themselves.

It should be a ball, and we’ve got some fun, interactive elements planned for it.

So if you’re a coding teacher, a developer who wants to teach, or a teacher who wants to teach coding, come along with us!

There’s still space, but not for much longer…

Middle Schoolers Exploring Coding

For those who aren’t as interested, they’re still going to be learning determination, perseverance and trial and error.
from the ReMarker, February 2021, “In a Growing Industry” by William Fitzpatrick Junior of St. Mark’s School of Texas

Issu had an interesting article from a middle school in Texas about the success of their coding program, which runs from fifth to eight grade. They equip their students with designated computer science teachers in all the grades, which is a huge leg up.

I think it’s a brilliant program they have for the kids, but my favorite piece of the article was the quote above. “For those who aren’t as interested.”

That’s a huge segment of the population. Those people who don’t know that much about coding, or maybe they do, and they find it’s just not for them (or don’t know if it’s for them or not).

In the Beginning

In the beginning of your coding career, whatever form that takes, you will likely find some use for coding that suits your needs. It’s how I started.

Where some people might thrill to solving puzzles for the sake of solving them, others may need a specific need met. This is why I love seeing the cross-curricular work that folks like Michael O’Kane, Giovanna Busconi, and Daniel Budd (and more) have put out there to teach coding under the auspices of history, or literature, or math. Maybe that’s how you started: you saw an application this skill in a field completely separate from computer science itself.

Explorations

Apple has an excellent curriculum designed for these sorts of folks: they might not fully get what coding is all about, but they use technology in their daily life, as most of us do, and could potentially benefit from another tool in their tool belt.

It’s called Develop in Swift Explorations.

You need a Mac and Xcode 11 (at least), but this course will introduce you to coding in the context of your daily life: how the device you use, like your phone, uses coding and how much of our daily interactions rely on coding and processes we might not have even thought of!

Like Everyone Can Code and the other Develop in Swift books, it’s a self guided book with student resources to download which include labs. At the end of each lesson you have a lab to complete that will help you practice your new found skills.

Explorations for Teachers

If you’re a teacher who wants to try using this material with your students (it’s aimed at high school or university students), I’m running a free week-long session in March that might help.

We’ll cover the Explorations curriculum, as well as the Develop in Swift Fundamentals course. Fundamentals is more of a computer science course, but still a great introduction to coding. We take you through the books and get you familiar with the material and ways you can teach it.

You can register here: http://s.apple.com/dE5i4p0g8b

This is a golden opportunity to meet some amazing teachers and coders. We’ve had some incredibly diverse audiences in the past, and this time should be no different. But it’s also a chance to ask questions about the material, and how we teach perseverance and determination. It’s going to be intense, with lectures and workshops in the morning. Then we’ll have a bit of homework and some showcases, group discussions in the afternoon. You’ll get the chance to meet the instructors in smaller groups to ask pointed questions or just have a chat. And each evening we have a special guest of some stripe scheduled.

So if you’re a teacher, you’re more than welcome to come along with us! Sign up at the registration link above, make sure you have a Mac handy, and we’ll start you on your coding adventure.

https://thecodehub.ie/teaching-swift-slack

If you have any questions, feel free to join our Teaching Swift Slack instance, where you can drop me a note.

I hope to see you the first week of March!