Taking Your Club on The Road
This week the club had its first field trip. I decided that it would be fun and educational to attend one of Apple’s App Lab: Code Your First App Session. As I have mentioned before, the best way to find them is to use the Apple Store app or website and select the group events. From there you can filter based on your location and needs.
Depending on the size of your club, you may need to travel a bit further to find an Apple Store that can accommodate your club. Luckily, we are about 35 minutes from Apple Park and the Visitors Center location can handle large groups. Unless you have a large Apple Store in a mall close to you, your best bet would be a stand-alone store for larger groups.
Once you have chosen the location and session, you’ll enter contact information and your group size. There is an option to have Apple contact you about the event. I went ahead and chose this option, as on the website they state the group size is limited to 15 and I have 18 members. After submitting the form you’ll receive an email confirming your reservation and a link to add a card to your Apple wallet.
If you chose to have Apple contact you, you’ll receive a separate email from the location to answer any questions. They confirmed for me that a group size of 18 is no problem for their location.
The next step was to print permission slips and get some parent volunteers/drivers. We are a private school so we do not have access to buses to use for field trip. I sent out both the permission slip and driver request forms about a month in advance. This gave the club members enough time to lose the forms a few times and the parents enough time to do any required paperwork prior to driving.
When you arrive at your location try to be a few minutes early and have everyone together. You’ll want to check-in with a specialist and they’ll direct you to where they hold the session. For us it was in front of the video wall. I briefly spoke to the specialist who was going to do our session to let them know who we are and that they all have some coding experience in Swift Playgrounds. The specialist appreciated the information.
Once the session is underway, don’t expect to sit around and sip your coffee. I spent the majority of the session helping get club members setup on the iPad and then correcting errant deletions and navigation errors. Parent volunteers can enjoy the Apple Store or a coffee.
The session was scheduled for an hour, but the Apple Store did not have anything scheduled directly after so they extended our session another 20 minutes which was awesome. At the end of the session the club members got to share their work with each other.
I thanked our specialist and then we had the obligatory bathroom breaks before heading outside. I knew that club members would be hungry after the session. Being at a stand-alone location there were few choices for drinks and snacks appropriate for members, so I brought along supplies for them. However since we were at the Visitor Center there was the perk of a coffee bar for our parent volunteer/drivers. That was definitely a bonus for them and me so we could enjoy drinks while the kids were having their snack.
After the drive back to school, many of the parents shared with me how amazing the experience was and how impressed they were with their member’s skills in coding.
Planning your trip:
Check the Apple Store app or website to search for a group session.
Make a reservation.
Send out permission slips and driver/ volunteer forms (if needed) a few weeks in advance.
Plan whether you will need drinks and snacks for your club.
Arrive a few minutes early and check-in.
Let the specialist leading the session know what your group is about and what skills they have.
Be ready to assist the specialist with iPad support (especially if you have a larger club).
Take photos and enjoy the experience.
Resilience and Coding
As club members progress through the coding exercises they are learning a lot of syntax and patterns, they finally reach a point where the puzzles in the book become more challenging. No longer are they able to quickly power through a puzzle by entering command after command with no forethought. The exclamations of how easy it is have changed to whispers of this is hard.
This is a time to pause and have a talk about resiliency and how it plays a part in coding. Remind the members of what tools they have learned to help them solve the puzzles: commands, for-loops, if-else-if conditional coding, and logical operators. Explain to the members that professional coders do not just jump in to tackle a large project, instead they examine what needs to be done and what tools can they use to most effectively solve the problem.
I like to show this video <https://youtu.be/sKpBJjsZ7EE?feature=shared> to remind member what resiliency is. We then review what resources that the members have that they can use when they encounter a problem that they cannot currently solve.
Review the previous lesson.
Step away from the iPad and reflect on what they have learned and how they can apply it to this problem.
Seek help from another club member.
Seek help from the club help desk.
Finally seek help from club leadership.
Reminding the students what resources they have to solve a problems helps to build the club community, but also give them members the confidence to know that even if they do get stuck there are ways from them to get unstuck.
Club Curriculum Update
After going through the different books and lessons myself I have decided to alter our curriculum. I am having my students got through Everyone can Code Puzzles, then Everyone Can Code 1 and 2, and then Blu’s Adventure and then Getting Started with Apps and Keep Going with Apps. Finally, students can complete different Playgrounds for different features that they may want to include in the app.
While Learning to Code 1 and 2 repeat some of the lessons learned in Getting Started with Code, it goes further and has the student practice each skill multiple times. Giving them more examples as to how the technique can be used.
A reflection after two meetings
After meeting twice I wanted to pause, reflect and share on what I have learned so far.
Have an agenda ready to go. Decide what you want to get through and what your quicker learners should do when they finish earlier.
Have a set of basic norms for students to follow until the club can determine their own norms.
Having snacks and drinks during the first 15 minutes gives the students time to settle down and focus on the upcoming meeting.
Realize, that just like in your classroom. Some of these kids are going to take to code like a fish to water. While others will take a little longer to progress through the lessons. Be patient and be sure to remind students of all the resources that they can use to find a solution.
You may want to take a couple of these kids who are proficient at coding and assign them a job as a student help desk. This will give the other students a place to go to ask for help and allow the proficient students to practice leadership skills.
Next, you will want to have a couple of student leaders to perform tasks, such as passing out of snacks and drinks, passing out and collecting iPads running certain parts of the meetings and other such tasks. as you progress through the year, and the students become more comfortable in the format of the meetings and encoding, you can release more responsibilities to these students.
If you are using iPads from a shared cart, make sure the other teachers understand that the iPads need to be plugged in when they are done with them so the club members will have enough power to get through a coding session. there is nothing worse than having kids not being able to code because of power issues.
Staying on the issues of iPads from a shared cart. Make sure you somehow document which iPad each student has so they can get the same iPad each meeting and they can pick up in Swift Playgrounds where they left off.
Having an Apple TV set up in the area, makes it much easier to play videos, and share code.
You can find Apple produced videos about coding topics in swift Playgrounds on YouTube. It is a great way to start a new topic.
I would suggest completing the puzzles yourself prior to the club meetings, even if you are proficient in coding, so you understand what the goal of the puzzle is when students ask.
Give yourself around 5 to 10 minutes before the end of each club meeting for students to have time to reflect about what they learned today. You could also use this time for a group code review. This is especially useful if you .have an Apple TV to airplay the students screen to so they can explain and show their code.
Ordering the T-shirts for the club can take longer than what you think it would.
5 Week update (well a little late)
As a review my One Best Thing was to share my experiences, learned best practices and things to avoid when establishing a Swift Coding Club.
Starting your club
Download, save somewhere easy to access, and read the Swift Coding Club Guide https://www.apple.com/in/education/k12/docs/swift-club-playgrounds.pdf
Date and time: check with admin and others to ensure that your Coding Club sessions won’t conflict with other clubs, meetings, or sporting practices. This helps to ensure maximum participation.
Plan for how long you want to run the club for. The guide breaks down the lessons into 3 12 lesson blocks, having one meeting a week going through the whole guide will take almost an entire school year.
Check you iPad inventory and make sure:
They can run a current version of iPadOS
That Swift Playgrounds, Apple Books, Keynote, and Pages are installed and updated.
Determine the maximum number of club members this will depend on:
The number of iPads that are usable.
The size of the space you have access to.
Present admin with your idea for the club and what information you’ve gathered.
Number of members you estimate.
Number of usable iPads.
Location of meetings.
Time and day of meetings.
Which grade levels can join the club.
Overview of what you will be covering in meetings.
How long the club will run.
Create a flyer about your club:
Apple provides a basic template to use in their Swift Coding Club guide.
I recommend making another flyer that provides more information.
I created an online form for parents to sign up their child and included the link on the flyer. This gave me a good idea of the number of members.
I distributed flyers 6 weeks before the start of the club to allow sign up time.
Decide how to communicate with parents
I chose to use a password protected website for parent communication as it allowed the most flexibility.
Prior to the first meeting:
Make sure iPads are charged.
Make sure iPadOS is up to date.
Make sure apps are up to date.
Make sure Swift Playgrounds “Learn to Code 1” is downloaded.
Have snacks and drinks ready (be sure to check for member allergies)
Print Swift Coding Stickers (the template is included with the Swift Coding Club Guide)
Review the Everyone Can Code Puzzles book both student and teacher guide. https://books.apple.com/us/book/everyone-can-code-puzzles/id1481279769 https://books.apple.com/us/book/everyone-can-code-puzzles-teacher-guide/id1481279144