Category: ipad

Everyone Can Code

When you teach code, you’re also teaching logic, creativity, and problem solving—skills all students need for the future. The Everyone Can Code curriculum from Apple introduces students to the world of coding through interactive puzzles, playful characters, and activities for both in and out of the classroom. And from the start, they’ll learn to code in Swift, the same programming language used by professionals to build powerful apps.

Everyone Can Code is a set of free resources built around the Swift Playgrounds app that inspires students to code and solve real-world challenges. It includes teacher and student guides that offer flexible, engaging lessons designed to work for an hour or an academic year.  There are complementary Swift Coding Club materials for after school clubs.  App showcases give aspiring coders a chance to celebrate their ingenuity with the community, whether they’re learning in or out of the classroom.

 

Learn more about Swift Playgrounds

View the Everyone Can Code curriculum

Visit Everyone Can Code

Online platforms and programmable devices on iPad

scratch coding
sphero robot

UPCOMING APPLE WEBINARS

Everyone Can Code – Inclusive App Design Activity

Great apps start with great ideas.

Inspire your students’ great ideas with an hour‑long Inclusive App Design Activity. Learners will identify problems they care about, then plan, prototype and share app ideas that everyone can access and understand.

Each step features additional resources and tips to simplify the lesson for early learners or extend the activity using the Everyone Can Code App Design Journal for years 5–9 or the Develop in Swift App Design Workbook for year 10 and up. Learners also have the option to experiment with code for their app ideas in the Swift Playgrounds app.

Educators Steve Bunce, Matt Hanlon, and Lyndsey Balfe are hosting a special #CodeWeek webinar on 21st August 6pm CEST to go into these resources in detail. You can register for the event here

See the activity on Apple Teacher Learning Centre

Download the App Design Journal

Download the App Design Workbook

EDUBLOCKS

EduBlocks is an online coding platform for Python. There are projects and learning resources to help you get started and then you can start coding Python with blocks before transitioning to text-based coding. Being able to see the Python text on the blocks is useful when introducing the new language to learners. Once you’ve built your script with blocks this can then be viewed and edited as text, just like the real thing.

 

EduBlocks Learning Portal

scratch coding

SCRATCH

Getting started with Scratch by Code Club

Did you know that Barefoot run online Scratch workshops that are free to attend?

Go to Barefoot workshops

Scratch is a free online block-based coding editor and community. With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century. It is designed, developed, and moderated by the Scratch Foundation, a non-profit organization.

There is also a Scratch Jr app that is free and designed for younger learners.

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sphero robot

SPHERO

Sphero (@SpheroEdu) is a range of programmable robots, often spherical in shape, that can be remote controlled or programmed with code.
Programmable devices can be an excellent way to engage learners with a hands-on experience of coding, which is an abstract concept.

Here is an example of a Sphero in action:

The learners in this video were challenged to make the Sphero follow a ‘fairway’ route on a golf course floormat. They had to measure the distance of each straight, the angle of any turns and then create an algorithm for the Sphero to follow the path and reach the ‘hole’. There was lots of trial and error involved in getting the right speed and duration for the Sphero movement blocks but they all got there in the end – even if some were over-par! This learning involved an application of maths skills and understanding, along with some new computational thinking and programming ones.

OTHER SPHERO POSTS

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BEBRAS COMPUTATIONAL THINKING CHALLENGE – TEACHING PROBLEM SOLVING

The Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge is a great resource to develop your learners logical reasoning and pattern spotting skills for computational thinking and problem solving. Not only are those skills useful for computing science and maths, but also cyber security.

You can have a go at previous years’ challenges (no signup required) or you can register for their annual competition in November. The questions are in the form of engaging puzzles that start off relatively easy – so every student can have a go and should get something out of the competition.

Try out previous year’s challenges here.

We know lots of schools in Scotland engage with Bebras every year and some have shared their story with us Get in touch with us to let us know how your learners engaged with it and how you fared with the resources or the challenge.

MAKECODE FOR MICRO:BIT

Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit

This site from Microsoft offers projects to get you started with your micro:bit computer – it also has an online micro:bit emulator so you can test your code even if you don’t have micro:bits. The micro:bit is an affordale micro computer with lots of input and output options that make it interactive and very adaptable, so it can be used in lots of STEM learning too.

Visit the MakeCode site

CODE.ORG

code.org believes that every learners should have the opportunity to learn computing science. Their site has learning courses for educators to improve their own knowledge and games, projects and activities to engage learners in computing science. The games use block-based coding challenges to promote problem solving and start from their Pre-reader Express that uses arrows for directions and progresses to more challenging coding puzzles that require knowledge of angles.

Visit code.org

CODE.ORG COMMUNITY POSTS

There is so much maths in computing and that presents excellent opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. Why not plan to introduce directional language through these engaging… Read more