Month: October 2021

EU Code Week 2021: Sneak Peek

October 21

October 21st is barreling towards us, as is our App Inclusivity Challenge!

We’ll have a lot of hands on with Keynote prototyping, as well as the next leap: to code!

As a part of our activity, I’ve thrown together a playground based on a prototype one of Lyndsey’s students did. The goal is to show you (or your students) how the user interface relates to code.

If you’re curious and want to get a sneak peek of some of what we’ll be working you through on Thursday, go ahead and download this playground to your iPad or Mac. It’s in the main Code Hub Playgrounds feed, which you can access here: https://www.thecodehub.ie/playgrounds/

If you already subscribe to the feed, this new playground will show up when you tap on More Playgrounds > See All. It should look a bit like this:

It’s called Europe Code Week 2021: App Inclusivity Playground, and there are plenty of instructions in the playground, itself. If you’re lost, though, you can always join us on Thursday. We’ll work through the App Inclusivity activity and how you might use it in your classroom.

See you then!

EU Code Week 2021 is Here!

It’s October again and that means EU Code Week is back!

And this year I’m working on a little project with a few brilliant folks on an EU Code Week Challenge called the Inclusive App Design challenge.

The challenge is all about considering people from many different backgrounds with many different types of abilities when you design your apps.

The Activity & the Audience

Keynote

This activity is perfect for teachers who might have an iPad 1-to-1 classroom or school, but you can adapt it, no matter the gear you have on hand.

It’s also perfect for you if you don’t have a background in coding. We spend a lot of the activity just thinking about what makes an app and how we might design it to accommodate all sorts of users.

Introduce -- Brainstorm -- Plan -- Prototype -- Share
Working through the process

Now, we will still touch on coding, of course, as it is EU Code Week, but hopefully we’ll do so in as non-threatening a way as possible. To do that, I’ll show you Swift Playgrounds and the really fun Answers playground.

Answers playground icon
Answers Playground

This is a playground where students write code to get answers from their fellow students and can use those answers in their code later.

You’ll see how you can design your code and app at all sorts of levels.

For those who want to build out their creative vision, you’ll learn about Keynote prototypes and the power you can wield, putting your idea in people’s hands.

You can read more about the activity and what’s involved here: https://apple.co/eucodeweek_UK

Try it with Us

October 21

If you want to see how you might use this activity in your class, feel free to join us!

We’ll be running a 90 minute session on Thursday, October 21st at 18:00 CEST. We’ll walk through how to approach the activity and what you can do in your own classroom.

Register here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Inclusive-App-Design-CodeWeek-Apple

I hope you’ll be able to come; I think we’ll have some great tips and tricks for you to use this in your own classroom!