iOS in the Kimberley

We have received confirmation that we are touring our 3 day introductory course in the Kimberley and Geraldton.
Stay tuned for more details... Oh and we have just picked up another school for next year. There is a distance issue so we are going to really think about how we do delivery on this one.

Icon colours for first App

We are going with the Pantone 2012 colours of the year for the icons on the app.

Sharing the information

Presentation - Professor Bert Veenendaal

We had a little informal presentation with the head of Spatial Sciences today at Southern River. This was quite exciting to have the full academic team in the one room with the high schoolers and mentors. Professor Bert Veenendaal (CURTIN - Spatial Sciences) has been an avid supporter of the iOS program providing support and guidance to Dr David McMeekin and I when it was needed, particularly with dealing with the internal processes in a university. I was fitting that he arrived to meet our entire development team today. The 13 year olds, the university mentors and the high school staff.

images: Bert, Oliver and Mike Erith, Bert and Shaun, Bert and Josh, Bert and Ratuja, the entire gang

Mentor Progress

Tristan and Matt have been in dev mode to implement the most involved features in the app. These are the timetable and the events calendar. I'm extremely happy with the way they have come up with creative solutions to deal with the schools resourcing. Matt has improved and reused existing code he has developed and Tristan has come up with clever integration of the school's google app calendar to push out to our iOS app.

images: newsletter, canteen menu, map and timetable.

Main Graphic Navigation

We looked at graphic navigation and did a short tutorial on this. The 13 year olds want to change the navigation from a table view to a more visual, iconic interface.
This proved an excellent time to test their understanding of the architecture and how well the students could follow adding sub-navigation, or adding different view controllers and connecting the associated icons to the main view.
Today I flew solo as the mentors are in full development atm to finish the app for the school. Can't wait to see what they come up with! The art teacher will be helping out a little more now as we have more icons in place. I just hope the mentors are going to be OK with our about turn in the design of the app. Hehe...

The About\Newsletter

Another awesome tutorial from the mentors this week implementing the River newsletter within and the about feature. Will update with pictures as soon as I get them for you. Thanks

The School Map - 21st November

Well today it was onto mapping. Tristan and Matt have designed a straightforward nifty tutorial to map the classrooms at Southern River. We were told this was all changing next year however, it doesn't matter because those thirteen year olds really know their way around the xcode environment now. Our class took 40 minutes and the feature was implemented by the 13 year olds.

The absent view controller

Have I mentioned how much I love this program... Probably more than once now. Anyway...today we implemented the absent feature of our app. Pretty fun. The mentors took the class today pretty much on their own which was fantastic. And yes we finished implementing the feature within the 40 minutes. Oliver was finished first, he'd already completed the tutorial beforehand. Retuja had some minor bugs through not importing the framework which was easily rectified while Josh and Shaun found their way through with Tristan easily. Its great to sit back and let it run virtually on its own now....

We are on the downhill run and I'm so looking forward to what comes next.. Oh and we also had a little sneak peak at the Summly app. This was written by a 16 year old.

Mentors Matt and Tristan

Mentor - Tristan Reed is a lot of fun for the students and is graduating very soon. Tristan has been great to have on the team and has a very positive outlook.
Having been drawn to computers ever since he first used an Mac LC II at age five, Tristan Reed has involved himself in all areas of software development. Born in Perth, Australia, he was first introduced to web development in 2001 and has expanded his repertoire as technology improved over time.
Tristan likes to help people solve problems. To this end, he has applied his skills in application development in all of its forms, as well as business analysis and web development using a wide range of technologies for a wide range of clients.
After scoring in the top one percent of high school students upon graduation in 2009, Tristan decided to commence a Bachelor?s degree in Software Engineering at Curtin University, where he has scored a wide range of awards and scholarships for his academic achievement. He is currently working as a freelancer on a variety of commercial projects alongside being an academic at Curtin University.

Mentor - Matt Lavender is simply brilliant with iOS development. That is his gift. Matt enjoys japanese food and looking after his app CURTIN helper that has been downloaded by over 3000 CURTIN students. We are very lucky to have Matt.

Young Rewired State

Loving this idea...

Finishing the Navigation

Today's lesson was unstructured. I had two mentors with me and was going to introduce the absent view controller. This function the students wanted to be sent by the app when a student/parent needs to notify the school they are not there. However the method I wanted to do this with was more complex than what it needed to be and I didnt want the students to learnt it this way.

We had to finish the navigation table which Shaun had already completed by the lesson and Ratuja was happy to follow his lead and work it out herself. Oliver's was asking questions proving he is knowledgable about the interface now and one of the mentors expressed to me how much more confident he was.

Josh was sick.

And this is how we are looking at the moment!!!

We covered maintenance with Disk Utility on the Macs for the students so they can begin to look after their machines themselves.

These children have been pushed quite hard for the first 5 lessons with coding and now as a result they are at a stage where I can ask then to add a framework or look for a particular object and they understand where in the interface I am asking them to go. The xCode IDE can be a little complex and these students are only 13 years old, even if I believe a thirteen year old can do they need to do it for themselves.

We had two youtube videos to watch today. One TEDx talk on a 12 year developer with two apps on the app store.

And one by Thoughtworks one of my favourite companies on the state of mobile delivery and how fast it has developed and particularly what is happening in Africa with mobility. We only needed the first section of this.

Mentor Matt was kind enough to tell the group about his app "CURTIN HELPER" which has had 3000 downloads which equate to about 10% of CURTIN students. Both the mentors are fantastic and I could not ask for better CURTIN students for these high schoolers.

Oh we also have our next phase with the design team as well. Keith Turner will need to colour the icons that the design team mocked up earlier this year....Cant wait.

Brainstorming ideas

These are some of the things happening in the group diagrammatically... I'll add to this as we move through the program.

Teaching Xcode visually

It occurred to me that app development can be communicated visually on a screen, or iPad rather than a text book. I love merging art and the communication of technical concepts. Stay tuned for more visually designed lessons

Navigation for app

Today we worked on the main navigation for our app. We had 4 working apps at the end. Very productive day.

Spacecubed

We have fantastic developers here in Perth and across Australia. I can vouch for that!!! We have the Discovr guys, and a few young developers that have had millions of downloads each.

Last night I visited Spacedcubed with both children in tow to hear Louis Cremen and Tim Oliver speak. The kids were amazingly behaved and I got to learn a stack on passcode from Tim and social media frameworks with Louis. Yes folks thats my idea of a great night out!!! Louis latest app is called Moment Montage

App Design

Today we did app design. We spent about an hour deciding what features to put into our app.

Very smiley children today. I wonder what they put in the water out here??? lol. Its great to see everyone contribute, open up and come out of their shell.

I'm evaluating the iPad mini's at the moment... I'll let you know what I find out...

So the list of features wanted on the app by the students was quite extensive:
Maybe I should not start the discussion with So what would you like?....lol

• Transport -me
• Canteen - shaun
• Meeting Request - shaun
• Uniform - me
• Timetable - shaun
• Absent - Rituja
• Events - group
• Newsletter - group
• School Map - Technician
• About - me
• Getting Here - Josh
• Contact Us - Josh
• Student Email - rose
• Links - rose

Thomas watching on!!!

In action

Stuart and Matt working hard...

Mentor Feedback - After 4th delivered tutorial

Well it looks like our students are really appreciating the opportunity to learn Xcode with our mentors.  I was delighted to receive the following feedback today:

Hi Mel,

Could you please let us know the tute for next week..

This week tute went well. We add the email function on previous app and

we also managed to finish the previous one as well.

Cheers,

So please with my mentors and proud of the Southern River kids....

Louis introductory talk on iOS to the mentors

Some Great Icon Artwork from the Students from Keith Turner - Southern River's Art Teacher

Southern River Students

Hi Everyone,
Roze Cole has forwarded the following students from Southern River that are going to take part in our iOS program:

• Joshua Moran - year 9
• Shaun Orr - year 9
• Ibukunoluwa Idris (uses Ibukun as his name) - year 9
• Oliver Niyonsaba - year 9

Thanks

First day of iOS course

Hi Everyone,

Well this post has great news!!!  We have finalised our four mentors and our four year nine students from Southern River.  Next week the course at CURTIN starts for the mentors which is very exciting.  The demand has been unsurpassed which means it can be financially sustainable and we can go to Southern River again next year.

App Art and Development

We are needing great ideas to put in this app so we have asked Southern River to supply as many great ideas as possible.  What does the school need in this app?  A staff directory of contacts, a location, a calendar, who knows so we have asked them.  The school will ask the students what they would like and we will take it from there.

We also need some artwork for the app.  So sitting between some neat features and a nice looking screen is where we need to be with this.