More training

Got Louis back to train up our next round of kids....  Love having him here.  We have an absolutely epic year coming next year which I'm really excited about....  It's literally going to be huge!!!!

We've got to get ready....

dev world - australia 2014

Hey everyone, Speaking at DEV WORLD australia about our work. If you are in Melbourne....Come on down!

Year 9 app upgrade

The year 9s have already given us a few ideas about upgrades to the existing app. I was on my own this week so we coded for half the lesson and then did a design exercise for the rest. I'll upload some of the ideas. Whoops no wait that is "Honey" the coding chihuahua!!!

core data

Hi Everyone, Tristan and Jeremy were away last week on research so Matt and I took the year 10's this week. We finished a lesson for their new note taking app which is going to feed into the tourism business down South. We started on Core Data with them. Its great to see some the students taking care of their own maintenance. The student that upgrades his own XCode will usually team up with someone else who needs it. These kids that are now coding socially on the weekends are pretty enthusiastic in the class. You always can spot a "geek in training". Because that is the child that was you not so many years ago. The year 10's are completely unfussed about XCode. Its just something they do now on a regular basis. They have become really relaxed about debugging too. Mel

Yr 10 group

The year 10s are continuing from last year and have a new app to develop.  When it's written we will release details....

Another crazy day

Just upgrading 21 laptops to run the latest version of the GUI!!!  Hope it still runs with the schools SOE.....the second figure is the design exercise to upgrade the app the year 9s wrote last year...  I wonder what they will come up with.  We have had some great ideas so far!
Have noticed that the new group is complaining when we run out of time. They love coding!!! They seem to understand that its completely achievable because the year 10 group have already written the school's app.
When we turn of the projector...
"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
They are HAVING FUN

App listed on App Store

Well looks like John Tonkin College is very cool now!!!  We are beyond excited to announce their app accepted on the App Store!!!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/jtc-mobile-john-tonkin-college/id900327189?mt=8

2013 prep!!!

Well in full swing now for next group of year 9's and continuing the year 10's. Heaps of news here however maybe a few pictures will work because I am busy!!!

How's the new teaching facility??? What I want to know is how did David get that back wall interior to match the colours on my iOS curricular!!! Hehehe....

Dr David McMeekin (co-Founder)

Spotlight on David today!!! Here's David in his WWDC tracksuit! We are seeing quite a bit of each other this month as we get ready for the third iteration of this course. What that involves is:

1. Updating the curriculum which has become ridiculously large now.
2. Liasing with education department staff (David is a great people person)
3. Making sure everyone is happy with the way we do this!!!

As the team involved with this needs to be fully coordinated and everybody needs to know where we stand from day one when the students arrive. The funny thing is with these classes and I may have mentioned this before, is that we have no behaviour management issues with them. We do low socio economic schools and their focus and diligence in the class is amazing, its lovely to watch. We also have a 1:1 ratio of male and female students in the development classes which is awesome.

Now back to David... I have not actually mentioned this but at the very beginning of this course I had a bit of a health issue. This saw me in Charlie Gardner hospital for 6 weeks in oncology. To be honest although I had a tube wired into me (felt like a cyborg!!!) 24 hours a day, keeping this course going and stepping it through the initiation phase became mandatory. I ended up walking from hospital without medical clearance to get back to this, well because I'm a bit stubborn like that!!! If you have seen "convos with my two year old" apparently that's not dissimilar to me! Anyway this is about David. We had floated the idea for this course in a taxi at the second last AUC conference in Melbourne. It was just an idea at this stage but little by little it became a reality. The admin of the course and curriculum were under me at this stage whist in hospital. Some of the mentor contracts became tricky to process. To make the admin more transparent the contracts were moved under David and his department at University.

David is a founder and a hero of this course. He makes sure the apps developed are native to the iOS platform ( we have had other requests) and we keep the course, development and coding based. Oh and he has three very brainy kids and a German wife who likes to go camping.

I have been asked recently about storyboards. They are not fundamental to this course although they are used. We consider them a design tool only and this is a development course. Our kids code!!!!!! And yes I threw a mega tantrum when I first saw them. Far to basic for our kids!

haha

how it works

I often get asked how this project works and to be honest, its a amazing mix of people that have a common value system of "raising digital literacy in children". It seems to have grown so much from David and my conversations of how Xcode is the most natural development environment for children and that they should all be learning it. I honestly believe that there was a vision to put this in high schools when it was adopted but I'll never meet Steve Jobs now so I'll never know. This may give you some idea of what we do: