Everyone can Code
Today’s topic is Everyone Can Code, Apple’s coding curriculums. I say curriculums because they have early learners, Elementary, and high school level curriculums. They even have resources to start a Swift Coding Club and hold an hour of code session independently of the full curriculum.
The early learner, elementary, hour of code, and coding clubs all use Swift Playgrounds on the iPad. The upper elementary and high school curriculums start to transition to using a Mac and Xcode.
In this article I am going to focus on the early learner and elementary levels as that is what I have the most experience with.
Why teach coding? It’s an important question at a time where we as educators have so many things we need to cover. Coding can enhance and encourage critical thinking skills. While you may think that coding is all technical, it also develops creative thinking skills. Sometimes to solve a problem in code you have to think creatively and outside of the box. Additionally, some of the lessons correspond to Everyone can Create lessons. Coding is a collaborative effort. Pair programming (where two coders work together to solve a problem) is used in the professional coding world and it works in the classroom as well. It aides in independence and team building. After I explained that helping each other solve these problems is the best way to learn, the students in my classroom came up with their own “help queue!”
The Everyone Can Code curriculums have accessibility in mind so all your kids can learn to code. All videos include closed captioning as well as speakers who also sign using American Sign Language. The puzzles in the various lessons include tactile layouts.
As expected, the curriculum starts with the basics. Apple has thought ahead and before you get into passing out iPads, starting up apps, and typing in code, you’re going to lead your students through a physical, device free activity to learn about a computer science/programming concept.
The first chapter is about commands. Basically, how to tell the computer how to do something. The activity has the kids hiding an object in the classroom or outside and then writing a list of commands that must be followed by another student to find the hidden object. This activity reinforces the idea that the computer is limited in what it can and can not do, and that students must tell it line by line, command by command.
There is a physical activity for each chapter in the book, as well. Each chapter covers a different aspect of learning to code.
The teacher edition of the curriculum includes all the links for the exercises, activities, presentations, and videos.
Each chapter is broken down in four parts:
Learn: you watch a video and then do direct instruction and discuss the programming concept as a group.
Try: the students take what they have learned in the chapter and use it to solve a coding puzzle in Swift Playgrounds.
Apply: students then use the concept they’re learning and apply it to their own small assessment, which may be done on the iPad in Swift playgrounds or a question they answer on paper in the book.
Connect: now, they take these concepts and apply them to real world situations. One example would be taking your students on a field trip to an Apple Store to watch a presentation, then the students discuss what they can use in their own coding presentations.
The Swift Playground is a simple to use, but powerful enviroment. The lessons are incorporated into a playground layout, which is a kid friendly interface. It has the goals of the lesson listed and below that, one half of the screen has the steps and hints to solve the puzzle, with the puzzle and character the students are controlling on the other half of the screen. When you first start, the commands are listed in a shortcut bar so the kids can just tap on the command they want to add into their program, so there is no need to memorize or type which makes it nice for our youngest coders. As they progress through the chapters more commands are added and the kids begin to make their on functions as well.
There are a total of 10 lessons in the puzzles book that cover the basics of coding in Swift. They include: commands, functions, for loops, variables, conditional code, types and initialization, functions with parameters, logical operators, while loops, and finally arrays and refactoring. Each of these concepts build off the previous ones. By the time you have completed the book you will have full fledge coders on your hands!
The Swift Coding Club is a close proximity to the Everyone Can Code curriculum format, but it is broken into smaller segments for shorter club meetings. You should be able to fit in a session during your lunch time. There are downloadable resources to help you get the club up and running. The downloadable resources also include templates for decals to make t-shirts, stickers, posters, and completion certificates.
Finally, the Hour of Code is a single lesson,
annual lesson that focuses on one coding topic to get the students into Swift Playgrounds and coding quickly. There is a separate booklet for this program.
The Everyone Can Code curriculum makes it easy to incorporate teaching code into your school day without having to do a lot of prep. The benefits to our students learning to code will help enhance their critical and creative thinking skills, which can be applied across the curriculum and beyond.