 So everyone, welcome to our Computer Science Education Week webinar, How Do You Build an App? We are really excited to have you here with us today learning a little bit from one of the co-founders of CESA. But first I'm Angela, I lead the community team here at CESA, which basically means I get to work with all sorts of teachers all around the world who use CESA, maybe even your teacher, and I was also a kindergarten teacher for many, many years, but now I work here at CESA. I have two of my own kiddos at home who are in third and sixth grade, probably like many of you out there. And today what we're going to do is we're going to meet Carl, one of the co-founders of CESA in just a moment, but we're going to discuss some of the schooling he had, some engineering experiences, and then we're going to talk about some basic steps for building an app and then have time to answer your questions at the end as well. So be thinking while we're talking what you might want to ask us near the end. So hello, Carl. Hi there. Really? Hi everyone. Can I have you? Yeah. My name is Carl. I'm one of the CESA co-founders. I've got two kids of my own. That's Charlie and Lily there. And we are coming to you from San Francisco, California, which is there on the map, the home of the Golden Gate Bridge. And we have an office in a office building downtown that looks like that from a satellite. We're on the seventh floor and we've got space here for about 50 people who now work at CESA. We have grown a lot from over the last few years, from just two of us, Adrienne and myself that started the company to now over 50 people who work here and have lunch in this space every day. Just like our little lunch room. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk first about how did you become an app creator, Carl? So maybe you can give us a little bit of like your school experience. What happened with that? What did you do? Yeah. Where did you begin? Well, I've been interested in computers and programming from a very early age, like when I was in kindergarten. And I was always really excited about understanding how things work and how to use technology to solve problems for people. So I got involved in computers when I was really young. My parents tried to expose me to a lot of different things. And then I went on to study computer science at college. Awesome. So if you were talking a little bit about being a young child. What was your very first experience with computer programming? So computers looked a lot different when I was starting. This is a picture of what's called a TRS AD. It was something that you plugged into your television to see what was on the screen and you used a cassette tape to store and load programs. You might not even know what a cassette tape is. But your teacher will have to tell you later. Yeah, your teacher will tell you later. But computers look pretty different. And my first experience was actually I took a class in a programming language called Logo, which is all about making this turtle move around on the screen and draw things. It would seem super simplistic to all of you today, but I thought it was just amazing that I could make this thing do what I wanted it to do. So the way you tell computers what to do is you write code. This is an example of some code in CSaw. And it's basically basically computers are kind of dumb in a weird way. Like they do exactly what you tell them to do and that and only that. And so writing code is the process of being very specific about where you want a button to go on the screen, what should happen when you click on it. Exactly. But what I think really initially drew me to programming and building apps was that it was a way for me to be creative. I was not an amazing artist, but computers let me take a blank sheet of paper or a blank screen in that case and really make it do whatever I wanted it to do. And that that sort of ability to make something was really, really exciting to me and what still excites me now. That's awesome. So we're going to go into some basic steps for building an app. And we're going to kind of talk quickly through them. There's all sorts of things. And Carl has gone through years of schooling to get to this point, but it'll give you an idea of some basic steps to follow. So here's kind of the things that we're going to talk about, but we'll go through each one one at a time for the steps in building an app. So the first one is really to think of an idea. Yeah. So, you know, the beginning of any app is really trying to understand what problem are you trying to solve might just be I want to build something cool for my friends or it might be, you know, I've got, I observed some problem in the world that I want to make better, that I think a computer program could help. And what were we what were you trying to solve with Seesaw, Carl? Yeah. So, you know, we heard from a lot of teachers that they were looking for ways to help collect and organize and share all the great things that people were learning are in the classroom, whether that was on using technology or not. And I would come home and ask my kids every day, what did you do in school? And they would tell me nothing. And so I thought those two ideas could kind of combine into a product like Seesaw. Love that. So step two, make a plan. Yeah. So the thing about coding is that you have to be very, very specific. And so it's easy to get a lot of things wrong. And so before you start coding, it's usually really helpful to kind of make a looser plan for what you want your program to do. What are the screens going to look like? How do you want the flows to work? And oftentimes we do that just on pen and paper. We make pictures of things and we sort of show those to people and see what they have to say. So when we first started Seesaw, you know, you may be familiar with a screen that looks kind of like this. It has a few more buttons on it now. But we just made we made that picture in a drawing program and we showed it to some teachers and we're like, here's kind of how it looked. You click on photo, you then get a camera and be able to take a picture of something and then, you know, record your voice on it. And we showed that to teachers like Angela. And that was one of the very first teachers we showed it to. I kind of said, what do you think? And got their ideas and kind of made some changes and tweaks based on their feedback. So you had to write the code, right? So the hard part is figuring out kind of what you want to build. Actually, the coding part takes time. But if you have a clear sense of what you want to build, it's not that hard. So you need to learn these languages to tell the computer what to do. Here's an example of that code again. But and what coding language do you use here at Seesaw? So we use a bunch. So for every platform, so like your iPhones or your Android devices or your Chromebooks, all use different programming languages. So we use a language called Objective-C for building iPhone apps. We use a language called Java for building stuff that works on Android devices. And we mostly use like Python and JavaScript to build a Seesaw that works on your Chromebooks. So now we're at step four. Yeah, and fix. So so the invariably, you will get some things wrong. When you're writing code, we call those bugs. Bugs are things that are ways in which the computer program you wrote doesn't do what you thought it should. And the only way you find those things is you actually test it. You go through the steps of using the product yourself. You go through it with other people and then you go back and fix the bugs to make a change. And one of, you know, they're kind of two phases of testing. One is does the code you wrote work in the way you wanted it to and you can kind of test that internally and fix those bugs in your code. But then there's a different kind of testing we call beta testing, which is was your plan actually the right plan? You know, your code is working the way you thought it was. But maybe the problem you thought you were solving doesn't actually solve the problem. And the only way to really test that is to get your app in front of whoever, whoever it is that you anticipate using it, you know, for CSI students and teachers and parents and see if it actually solves their problem, see if it actually works the way you expected and then get better. And can you tell us what beta means? Yeah, so beta is from the Greek alphabet. It's the letter B and the why we call this a beta test is that it's like a little past the letter A, it's a little past alpha. It's mostly working, but it's still pretty early. It's not the finished product yet. Just the test, just a way to get some feedback. So so one of the first beta tests we did for for CSI was again, a bunch of classrooms like Andalus and we said, hey, OK, the way you're going to log into CSI is you're going to type in a class code and this was the login screen. And, you know, we showed that to a few teachers and they were like, huh, well, you know, that doesn't actually work so well for us. Getting everyone to type in a six letter code was a lot of work for teachers. And one of our teachers, a guy named Zach, was like, hey, I instead of a code or maybe an addition to a code, it'd be really cool if you could scan a QR code and he sent me this picture when I was talking to him and he said, why don't you build this? And that's actually where the idea for signing into CSI from a QR code came from a came from a teacher in this beta test period. And this is some more of his sketches, some more of his sketches. You know, he said, when you're done, there should be a big green check, which if you are paying attention when you see, so there are factors. All right. So we're at step six. Yeah. So once once you get all this great feedback, you know, you kind of in some ways start again from the beginning, right? You might find a new bug and you need to fix the code. You might come up with a new idea or a change for an idea that you already had and the whole process kind of starts all over again. You're not done. You're never done. The the funny, amazing, interesting thing about software is that you're you're really never done. You can always make it better. And so we're constantly, you know, what they call iterating, going over and over and over again on CSI to make it better, listening to more feedback and more ideas from folks like that fancy word iterating. Yeah. What does that mean again? So it means like turn over again. So it's like start back at the beginning and go through the same process again. So if we think for a second, how long did it take you to build something that you wanted to share with everybody? Yeah. So the first data test we did on CSI was after like three or four months of working with a team of about three people. And then it was about six months before we actually shared it with the world. Cool. And then we're sharing it with the world. Yeah. So so once you've gone through this period of testing and iterating and you feel like it's good enough to share to everyone, you know, you need to publish publish your app for mobile apps. That means publishing it to an app store like Apple's App Store or Google Play. If you've got a website, you put it up on a server where other people can access it. And, you know, as it says here, the iteration doesn't stop even when you launch. We're always listening to feedback and continuing to evolve. So this was what CSI looked like when we first launched. You can see it has a few more buttons than the last screenshot. We added video and drawing. And this was a screenshot from the App Store when we launched, you know, coming up on four years ago now, which is it's changed a lot to me. It's changed a lot. So we're going to answer some questions now. I'm really excited about one of them came in before we started the webinar. So we're going to start with that. And then we're going to give you a chance to ask questions as well. So Ms. Leitch asked, how often did you fail and need to find a solution? So, you know, in many ways, I think we fail at some little thing every day. We are constantly trying out an idea and seeing what goes wrong. One of the bigger quote unquote failures, though, was when we first started working in this area, we built a product called Shadow Puppet, some of you may use. I still like that product. But as a business, it wasn't really working that well. And it was really through building that product and getting close to a bunch of classrooms and teachers and hearing about their problems, the ideas for CISA emerged. So on the one hand, I feel like Shadow Puppet was kind of a failure. And on the other hand, I think it was, you know, the sort of secrets to the success of CISA. So oftentimes what feels like a failure in the moment isn't really it's just a step on the way to success and just keep trying. Right? I love that. I love that. So we're going to answer some questions live. So here's how this is going to work. Your teacher is going to be able to type in questions and we ask that when you type in a question, you include your grade level and your location so that when we read it, you know, we're talking to you, but we're going to play a little bit of music here for about 30 seconds to give you time as a class to chat and share your ideas about what you'd like to ask with your teacher so they can share it with us. So here we go. We're looking at all the questions. I know there are so many exciting my favorite part of this talk. Keep them coming. OK, well, there's so many. Now we're not going to have time to answer all of them, but boy, we'd love to. So we're going to start with Ms. Albert's class is asking how did you get the name CISA? Yeah, it's a great question. So when we before we launched, we need to come up with a name for this thing. And we wanted something that sort of felt like it belonged in a school or belonged as something to use with kids, but wasn't too literal. It wasn't just like, you know, photo journal or class journal or something like that. And so we were we were trying to come up with some names that were a little bit playful and we brainstormed a bunch of things that were related to school. And, you know, we had things like spiral from like a spiral notebook. And one of them was was CISA. And we chose CISA because it felt kind of fun, but also had this idea of being kind of visual, which is really important to us when we were working on CISA and this kind of back and forth between students and teachers and parents. Love it. Like a CISA. Like a CISA, up and down, right? OK, so Ms. Gant's class is in Burnsville, Minnesota. Hello, Minnesota friends. What are are you currently working on a new app or version of CISA? Yeah, so we are always working on the improvements to CISA, you know, of the 50 people that work at CISA, about half of those work on our product and engineering team, and they are always listening to feedback from teachers and students and parents and trying to make what we've built already better or to like listen for ways in which CISA can solve new problems for for classrooms. And, you know, we're actually towards the end of the year here in our sort of process of planning what we're going to build for next back to school and have a lot of exciting. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. OK, Mr. Rondott's class is a fourth grade class in Michigan. And they want to know how old were you when you started coding and how many apps have you made? Yeah, so I started when I was really young. My parents wanted to expose me to a bunch of different things. I did gymnastics class and violin lessons. And I did computer programming classes when I was like around five years old. And computers is kind of what stuck. I have then gone on to study computer science in college and work in the technology industry. So I've had a chance to work on some apps of my own that I made in my own companies, but also, you know, if you use Google Calendar, that's a product I worked on as well. Well, we have so many great questions here. It's like, where do we go next? Oh, this is a great question from Miss Bear, other class. I hope I'm saying your name right fourth grade in Estes Park, Colorado. What is your favorite part of CISA? What are you most proud of? Yeah, so I think one of the things that, you know, really makes my sort of face light up when I'm coming to work is hearing about the ways that CISA has been able to help students express themselves and really share what they're learning, what their their peers or their parents or their teacher, that idea that we can really help students get excited about learning and show what they know is really at the core of CISA. Love it. OK, Mr. Schmidt and Miss Del Nairt, Negro's fifth grade classes in Albany, New York, they want to know how long does it take to create an app from start to finish? Well, so the answer is sort of that it depends on how complicated the app is. You can build a simple app in a day. You know, the first version of CISA, which was a lot simpler than it is now, took us about three months to build, like three people for three months. Sometimes it might take a year if you're building a more complicated app. OK, Miss Murphy's third and fourth grade class in Michigan want to know how many students are using CISA? That's a great question. So we have teachers and students using CISA at over half the schools in the United States and in over 150 countries around the world. So it's millions of kids that interact with CISA. And that's, you know, that's pretty awesome. That's why I come to work every day to make CISA better for all of you. We only have this probably our last question. And then we have something else that we're going to share with them here. So Miss Setzer's class in Charleston, South Carolina, their fifth graders. How old do you have to be to work at CISA? That is a great question. You know, honestly, we don't really care how old you are as long as you can do the work and do the job that probably means you've gone to college. But, you know, we we'd make exceptions for someone who could come in and do the work we need done. Wow, that's awesome. So the other thing I want to let you know about is you get a chance to do some creating if you're a teacher would like you to participate. So we have an activity in CISA's activity library and you can also find it on the web page listed on this slide. But basically it is a little bit of a contest because we are looking to design the next CISA class icon. So in this picture here, you can kind of see what choices there currently are for class icons, and we are looking for three new designs and we want them to come from you. So your teacher can share this activity with you and you can use the drawing tools within CISA to create a new class icon. And what we're going to do is if your teacher shares that with us by Friday, you'll kind of be in our submissions because we're going to look through those and choose three designs that will inspire our CISA designer to turn that into a CISA class icon. So you might actually see a version of your design that inspired our designer and actually show up in CISA. So it's pretty exciting. You can find this again in the activity library. Your teacher can find it and share it with you. So that's really exciting. But we want to thank you for joining us here today. We're super excited to see what you learn and do all throughout this week. Computer Science Education Week. Make sure you share with us at CISA coders if your teacher wants to share with us. But thanks so much for joining us today, everyone. Yeah, thanks for joining us. Thanks for making CISA part of your class.