 Everyone can code. Most likely many of you are aware of the strong push in recent years to teach our kids coding. We at ESU8 are excited to share resources with you that help facilitate this important intellectual development in our young students. Whether it's for problem-solving and logic building, we know that coding stretches young minds to more powerful thinking. It also develops technology fluencies, and prepares students for future careers where coding will be critical to their success. All of these reasons lead us to know of the importance of coding in young minds development. In today's ESU8 Wednesday webinar, I hope to share with you a recent effort from Apple entitled Everyone Can Code. That along with a free app called Swift Playgrounds and accompanying teachers guides, we have a great bridge between the block programming and the language coding that needs to happen as students grow older, all accessible in easy-to-use apps and resources. We're going to start with a series of resources available on the accompanying handout. First off, Apple's website for the Everyone Can Code initiative. We visit this to learn the overall reasoning behind the movement, the importance of teaching coding as a language, as a literacy in our schools, a basic introduction to code making it accessible to even us who aren't as familiar with coding, recognizing that Swift is the coding language being promoted and taught with this effort, and reinventing how we learn how to code. We can learn more about the Swift Playgrounds app and we'll take a look at it in a few minutes. In it, basically, it's an experiential environment where the cartoon animated character named Byte on the screen is controlled by your code, your Swift code. Those code elements can be entered in, keyed in by the students, or drag and drop, suggested much like suggestive typing, and or pulled down from a menu. You can build a series of challenges that build on each other in order to develop your skills. The resources that we're going to take a look at include the app called Swift Playgrounds. It is important to note that you do need newer devices, newer than the iPad 2, in order to run the app, and that your devices do have to be updated to iOS 10.0 or later. While that might be a restriction currently, just keep it in mind for the future when you do have the devices and the iOS capable of running the free app. Many of your students or your own selves might have access to devices even in their personal learning environments that could potentially have access to this playground as well. In addition, we'll take a look at the Teacher's Guide, App Development with Swift, and learn to code one and two, is an accompanying iTunes U course, if you really truly want to follow lessons and skills in a progression with everything tied and wrapped into one course for easy access for you as the teacher. So we're going to start by taking a look, first of all, at the Swift Playgrounds app. And to do that, we're going to visit my iPad screen now. So to get started with the Swift Playgrounds app, first download it from the App Store. Make sure that your device is updated to iOS 10.0 or later before you get started. Tap on the app. You can see that I have learned to code one downloaded. Later on, hopefully I can progress through learn to code two. When I launch learn to code one, it starts with a brief introduction to what's going to happen, written in simple elementary terms. At any point, I can skip through this and get started with the coding activities. I'm on my first task in the learn to code one series. I'm trying to get my character bite over here on the right hand side. Notice that I can interact with this with my finger, with my touch as well. Pinch and zoom and rotate him. I'm trying to get bite to the gems for each of the tasks. In this first one called issuing commands, I learn about simple Swift commands, move forward, collect gem. And at any point, I tap run my code and try it out. If my code is correct, then bite will do what I had hoped he would do. I achieved the gem. I'm congratulated. And if not, I can debug it and try again. I can then progress to the next challenge, adding a new command and try that one. And you can see that I've already tried some of these. So in my table of contents, they're checked off. I can skip ahead and try something more challenging. I thought we might try this one called looping all the sides, which is in a later section of the app. And so on this one, you'll notice that if I run the code right now, gem is going to move forward, collect one gem, and then move forward three times and turn right. But now he's sad. He stops, he can't progress forward. What we have to learn how to do here is use a loop command. And it explains in the directions over here on the left that we're going to use a for loop from the code library. That's up at the top underneath of the plus symbol. We're going to drag that into our coding space and make sure that it is enclosed around all of the code. Now I can tap on the number entry box, enter in my for so that it will repeat itself four times and now run the code. It starts by over at the beginning. He performs the first set of code. And now he knows to repeat that four times. He'll eventually make it all the way around. And I will once again be successful in this one. And in my table of contents, it'll be marked off that I've completed that. So this is a great series. It's easy to use, easy to navigate, very interactive, lots of great features, for example, help built in, additional features under the tools button, glossary of terms, record a movie, take a picture, reset the page and additional features that you'll notice when you get involved and started in this. Now that we've seen what's possible with the Swift Playgrounds app, let's take a look at the accompanying teacher's resources. We'll start with the teacher guide for Swift Playgrounds, learn to code one and two. I've already downloaded this free from the iBook Store, so I'll open it up here and let you take a brief look at the table of contents. Now we'll start with chapter one, learn to code one. And you'll notice that the lessons inside of this teacher's guide are not all entirely within the Swift Playgrounds app. Many activities are offline, which is a great way to build the thinking skills needed for young students to get started with programming. So in this activity, they work to create a selfie and then share it. You also are prompted throughout the lessons to document the learning experience in the form of a journal. This one definitely promotes the Seesaw app, another free app that you can hear about on our ESU 8 Wednesday webinars. And then inside of the book as well, here's a hide and seek activity that's offline, a practice, and then an introduction into the Swift Playgrounds app and puzzles to complete that link to the lesson that you just worked through with the students. I really appreciate how each of these lessons has the time, the anticipated time it takes, and how it builds in the introduction and offline activity, ties it with the in-app practice, and then follows up with reflection. So letting students think about what they learned and why they learned it and then journal or sharing, documenting their journey with these lessons. The lessons build on each other and they all are tied back to skills that you would need as a coder, as an app developer, functions and loops, etc. Here's the next one here is on conditional code, and we'll eventually get through the Learn to Code 1 lessons, you can see there's six of those, and then begin the Learn to Code 2 lessons, which are definitely more challenging, more applicable for potentially junior high, middle school definitely still would be applicable here, and even beyond. So this is the the Swift Playgrounds teacher's guide. You can see that even if you don't have access to Swift Playgrounds and the app, that the lessons are still advantageous to teaching and learning, especially the activities that are the precursor into the practice part. If we go back out to the iBook Store, you'll notice two additional books. This one that's the more in the solid colored orange is called App Development with Swift, and this one is designed for high school students. So very similar, but instead of playing inside of a Swift Playground app with a cartoon character, you're learning how to code with Swift through a series of lessons and activities that are written in this simple iBooks format. There are quizzes to check your understanding and projects to create. There's also sample files that you can download or you're encouraged to download as a student that go along with these, which can practice your coding right along with the book, and then there's a teacher's guide to go with that as well. So App Development with Swift is the teacher guide to explain the lessons in the App Development with Swift book for students. So again, Swift Playgrounds learned to code one and two is geared towards middle school students. App Development with Swift is more high school and college age. Those are those free resources and just a quick brief overview. I realize that doesn't encompass everything, but it definitely allows you to introduce coding with the Swift programming language into your school, into any school. If you still need some more encouragement, I encourage you to check out the many resources that I've linked here, including the ones we just took a look at. A New York Times article about Apple's Everyone Can Code initiative. A blog post by Kelly Croy from the Wired Educator podcast, who talks about how you could learn to code in Swift on a Chrome book. Or if you don't have the iPads available, but you want to learn that Swift programming language, he does have some ideas that he shared here as well. And even beyond that, I encourage you to think about ways you can get started. You may see the value in coding for kids, but how can I get started in my classroom? One of those ways is to check out a STEM kit through the ESU8 Media Center. We do have the Parrot Rolling Spider mini drones, a set of those that can be programmed with the Tickle app. And it's the block programming, but it's a great predecessor to the language of programming and coding and thinking about how code is put together. The same with we have a couple of Sphero Sparks. The Tickle app is free, and so if students have devices that can be programmed at home, they can learn about how to make those codes happen inside the Tickle app, completely on their own. And I want to mention Osobot or Osobot for really young coders or pre coders, I called them. This picture is from second grade at O'Neill Elementary, Mrs. Langen's class. The students were programming this little Osobot. It's a tiny little, much smaller than a Sphero Spark, but you program it by using colors that you draw onto actual paper with markers. So you can see certain colors are codes for certain actions for the Osobot to follow. And as it travels along that path, it recognizes the code that the students have drawn on their papers and then performs various actions. So another really great pre-activity before you get into the actual Swift Playgrounds app. I wrote a blog post last year around the hour of code time, which is coming up again. Heidi Rethmeyer has a great Wednesday webinar from last year on hour of code. And if you check out those resources, a lot of them are for those elementary age students and how we can get started with coding. And it doesn't take a lot. Maybe it is thinking about how to start a coding club at your school during lunch or after school. It's amazing how much interest students have in the field of computer programming and coding and how much of their own personal time they will be willing to spend learning something new like this if you give them the opportunity. Maybe it's an independent study opportunity for a student who needs or is capable of pursuing something on their own. Maybe you could talk to your health coordinator, your high ability learners and find out how coding and the Swift Playgrounds app and the teacher's guide could fit into those experiences for our students. Definitely introducing the concept of coding to junior high tech exploratory classes or just bringing in one lesson into your classroom. And as a final note, I would recommend that at any time if you're unsure hesitant and how to get started with these resources to invite us from ESU 8 into your schools and we'd be more than happy to help you get started on this very important journey. So for this week's Wednesday webinar, I'm Katie Morrow and thank you so much for tuning in. I encourage you all to experience the joy in learning how to code with everyone can code.