CSTA 2021 - Get Started With Code Wherever You Are

If you are interested in K-5 coding curriculum that can be used in-person in the classroom or virtually for distance learning, join me for my Get Started With Code Wherever You Are session at the CSTA Conference on July 14!

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I will be sharing information about one of my favorite topics:

• Get Started With Code Wherever You Are

I love sharing great resources for teachers and students on how to make computer science experiences available to students even during distance learning, virtual learning, hybrid learning or in-person situations.

Link To YouTube Video

Everyone Can Code and Develop In Swift Curriculum

Apple has free teacher and student guides available in the Apple Book Store in the Books app on the iPad or Mac computer. The curriculum guides include ways to introduce coding concepts and key vocabulary, activities to help students better understand the concepts by through everyday activities, practice with block-based apps at the elementary level, and reflection activities that allow for using other apps to create multimedia responses that demonstrate student learning.

Learn More About The Everyone Can Code and Develop In Swift Curriculum

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Get Started With Code 1 and 2 Teacher Guides 

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Coding Concepts In The Get Started With Code Guides

Lesson Structure Overview:

Lesson Overview And Key Vocabulary

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Lesson Introduction And Kinesthetic Activities

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Unplugged Activities

The Get Started With Code guides contain unplugged activities that get students off their devices and up and moving to introduce coding concepts through familiar games and activities to help students understand and remember the concepts.

Lesson Activity

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Lesson Practice With Block-Based Coding Apps

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Block-Based Coding Apps

Block-based coding apps allow students to learn about coding concepts and practice them in apps without needing to know any coding languages. Students can simply drag and drop the code blocks to create a program.

Tynker

CodeSpark Academy

Daisy the Dinosaur

Lightbot Hour

Kodable

Scratch Jr.

Scratch

Hopscotch

Lesson Reflection And Optional App Design Activity

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Lesson Resources

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Robots And Physical Computing

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Robots With Block-Based Apps

Dash - Blockly app       

Sphero Mini - Sphero EDU app

Blue-Bot - BlueBot app

Resources:

Apple K-12 Education Teaching Code - Curriculum and resources for teaching code.

Apple Teacher Learning Center - Learn about iPads, apps, Mac computers, applications, and integration ideas. Get started earning your Apple Teacher badges.

Google Jamboard - Collaborative online whiteboard. Saves in your Google Drive account.

Google Meet - Video conference application.

Keynote - Apple presentation app for iPads and Apple computers. Awesome for creating presentations, drawing, animation, video, and layout and design.

Padlet - Online collaborative bulletin board application for sharing resources.

PowerSchool Schoology - Learning Management System for hosting courses and groups making it easy for students to find, access, and share materials and learning.

Seesaw - Content Management System for sharing digital messages with families and students and collecting their work from them.

Mobile Learning Conference 13 - 10 Steps To Hosting An App Design And Prototyping Camp

 Are you interested in learning more about how to host an in-person or virtual summer camp or after school club for students to get them excited about coding and computer science? You can host a club or camp focused on app design and app prototyping in 10 easy steps.

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App prototyping is the process of creating a working model of an app. Before spending a lot of time writing the code for an app, you can create a prototype to help you map out the interactivity and features of the app. Essentially creating models of each screen, the features of the app, and demonstrating what happens when you push a button. Does the app go to the camera app, a photo gallery, a data entry tool, or back to the home screen?

I hope you are able to join me to learn more about hosting a virtual summer coding camp or after school club focused on app design and app prototyping as a way to get students excited to learn more about computer science, coding, and app development. You can also integrate smaller pieces of this experience into any content area class to introduce the concept and help students make cross-curricular connections.

In addition to getting students excited about computer science and helping them to be more aware of the app development process, all of the materials that you need to help guide you through the process are completely free from Apple and can be used by anyone, regardless of having any coding experience. Resources are linked below.

Session Description

Learn 10 steps to guide you from start to finish in organizing and holding a virtual or in-person summer camp or after school coding club for students focused on app design and prototyping to build their interest in learning how to code and develop iOS apps. Hear about the process and free resources available to help your students learn more about app design, UI, and UX while prototyping a working model of an app using the Keynote app on the iPad to help solve a problem or challenge in their community. No previous coding experience needed. 

Google Slides and PowerPoint users can follow this process, too.

Presentation Slides

Session Slides

Marketing:

Creating a flyer to get information about the camp out to students, staff, and families is a very important step in the process so that everyone knows about the opportunity. Fortunately there are lots of great tools, apps, and applications that you can use to create your flyer.

I used Keynote and shapes from the built-in shapes library to create the flyer shown below.

Layout and Graphic Design:

Keynote

PowerPoint

Google Slides

Canva

App Ideas:

Where to start? We had students brainstorm ideas of apps that they thought could help solve problems or challenges in their communities or could help to promote opportunities or resources that  people might not know about.

We used the Google Jamboard app. Padlet would be another great resource for this task too. Both of these apps allow students to add sticky notes to a board to share ideas with others. By using a collaborative community board, students who were still struggling to come up with ideas were able to take inspiration from the ideas shared by others.

Learning About App Design:

Apple has an awesome App Design Journal that is a Keynote file that guides students through the four stages of the app design process: brainstorm, plan, prototype, and evaluate. The journal is loaded with helpful information and spaces for students to sketch, write, and record their thoughts as they move through the process.

Creating An App Prototype:

Building Interest - Creating A Good Pitch Statement: 

Celebrating Student Success:

Keep The Interest Going:

Resources:

Apple K-12 Education Teaching Code - Curriculum and resources for teaching code.

Apple Teacher Learning Center - Learn about iPads, apps, Mac computers, applications, and integration ideas. Get started earning your Apple Teacher badges.

App Design Journal - Keynote file students can use to guide them through the app design and app prototyping process.

App Showcase Guide - Tips, suggestions, and steps to hosting an app development or app prototyping showcase.

Google Meet - Video conference application.

Google Jamboard - Internet-based collaborative whiteboard. Great for collaborative brainstorming. Saves in your Google account.

Keynote - Apple presentation app for iPads and Apple computers. Awesome for creating presentations, drawing, animation, video, and layout and design.

PowerSchool Schoology - Learning Management System for hosting courses and groups making it easy for students to find, access, and share materials and learning.

iPad Challenge - Create A Stop Motion Animation Robot Video

 For anyone following along with our elementary Genius Squad program, here are the details of our third iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students.

This week students are exploring shapes in the Shapes Library in Keynote and how to break apart some shapes and then assemble shapes to create an original robot. Then they will create a stop motion animation robot video by animating the shapes in the Keynote app. Finally they can watch their video in the Photos app on the iPad and share it from there.

Challenge #4

Goal: Create a stop motion animation robot video out of shapes.

 

What do you need?

	Your iPad
	Keynote app
	Shapes in Keynote
	Photos app

How To Find Shapes In The Shapes Library In Keynote

Watch the video to learn how to find shapes in the Shapes Library in the Keynote app on your iPad.

Link To YouTube Video

Change Document Setup To 4:3

Watch the video to learn how to change the Document Setup in the Keynote app on your iPad.

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Format Shapes

Watch the video below to learn how to format the shapes on your slide by changing the color of items.

Link To YouTube Video

How To Break Apart Shapes

Watch the video below to learn how to break apart some of the shapes in the Shapes Library in the Keynote app on your iPad.

Link To YouTube Video

Create Your Robot

Now that you have selected your shapes, it is time to combine them to create an original robot.

Watch the video below to learn how to create your robot from the shapes you selected. 

Make sure your robot is original.

Link To YouTube Video

Robot Animation Challenge

If you didn't know how to use the Shapes Library in Keynote or how to break apart some of the shapes before, you do now! Good job!

 

Ready for the Robot Animation challenge?

  

	After you have finished creating your robot on a slide in the Keynote app, duplicate the slide and move one or more things a little on slide 2. Then duplicate slide 2 and move one or more things slightly on slide 3. Keep repeating this process until you have at least 50 slides or more.
	Share your finished video in the next media album.

I can't wait to see what you create!

How To Export Keynote Slides As A Movie

Watch the video below to learn how to export the Keynote slides as a movie to create your stop motion animation video.

Link To YouTube Video

iPad Challenge - Create A Digital Thank A Teacher Card

 For anyone following along with our elementary Genius Squad program, here are the details of our third iPad challenge if you want to share these resources with your students.

This week students are exploring how to create a digital thank you card with the Camera app, the Photos app, and the Pages app on the iPad.

Challenge #3

Watch the video below to hear about this week's iPad challenge.

Link To YouTube Video

Create A Digital Thank You Card

Goal:

 

What do you need?

	Your iPad and Stylus Pen
	Camera app
	Photos app
	Pages app
	Story about something good, fun, or funny that you remember from this school year.

Explore The Pages Templates

Watch the video below to learn about the templates available in the Pages app. 

Want To Know More About Lorem Ipsum?

Were you wondering what lorem ipsum meant when you were looking through the templates?   Lorem ipsum is placeholder text used in templates to allow users to keep formatting like spacing, fonts, colors, and styles but change out the words.   Read more about the history of lorem ipsum in this blog article. It is actually based on Latin.

How To Create A Digital Thank You Card

Watch the series of videos below to learn how to create a digital Thank A Teacher card with the Pages app on your iPad. You can pause after each video to try out what was shown as you create your own card. Make sure to check out the challenge page to find out what is required for this challenge.

 

Select The Photo Card Template

 

Add And Format Text

 

Customize And Format Shapes

Add Photo And Format Message Page

Add Message And Sign Thank You Card With Digital Ink

Export Thank You Card As PDF

Digital Thank A Teacher Card Challenge

If you didn't know how to find and customize the template documents in the Pages app before, you do now! Good job!

 

Ready for the Digital Thank A Teacher Card challenge?

	Think of a fun, funny, or good memory of lesson or activity one of your teachers did with you this year. This could be a story about something you enjoyed, learned about, didn't know before. You could write a thank you card to your classroom teacher, a specialist teacher, your principal, or someone else at your school.
	Make a list of some good memories.

 

	After you have a list of story ideas, tap on the Pages app and find the Photo Card templates in the Stationery section. Open the template and create a customized thank you card for one of your teachers.
	Submit your finished thank you card in the assignment.
	Email your card to the teacher using your email app on your iPad. This will make their day!
	Create more cards for other teachers if you have time.

I can't wait to see what you create!

Email Your Thank You Card

Don't forget to export your thank you card as a PDF and email it to the person you wrote it for. They will really appreciate getting a thank you card from you.

Resources:

Check back for future blog posts on new tutorials and challenges for elementary Genius Squad students.

Apple

Apple Everyone Can Create Guides

Apple Everyone Can Create Drawing Project Guide 

Apple Everyone Can Create Photo On iPad Project Guide

Apple 30 Creative Activities For Kids

Apple 30 More Creative Activities For Kids 

Apple Teacher Learning Center