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