 Getting set up. I know they can see us and here we're gonna start in a couple minutes. Okay Kind of work on your dance moves Carl Loving all the questions coming in so many classrooms. We're gonna get started in just a minute just a minute We have classrooms from all over the world. We are so excited that you are here with us today We have classrooms from all over the world joining in for computer science education week and we have Some great things to talk through today. This is how do you build an app idea to reality and We are sitting well, I'm Angela. Hi, by the way, I lead the community at CESA I was a kindergarten teacher for 15 years using CESA in my classroom as well Usually I'm in Minnesota, but I am right now in CESA headquarters in California will tell you a little bit more about that as we get going But I also have a fourth grader and a seventh grader so shout out to them if they are tuning in and Today, we're gonna meet Carl. He is one of the co-founders of CESA. What does that mean? Basically, he had the idea to create CESA We are going to discuss what he did in school to get to this place in his career and his engineering experience We are also going to learn about the steps to actually build an app And then take time to answer all of your questions Maybe not all of them in this session because we could probably take the entire day of school But we'll try to get through a chunk of them So we are excited for you to join us and without further ado. He's here's Carl Hi everyone, I'm gonna try and go through the Presentation here as quickly as possible so we can save as much time for questions But I'm Carl. Those are my two kids Lily and Charlie. Charlie's in third grade Lily's in sixth grade now We are in San Francisco, California which is over there on the map to orient everyone and in San Francisco, we have some key landmarks like The Golden Gate Bridge, which I'm sure you know we get to drive across this on a pretty regular basis. It's beautiful and The CESA headquarters is located in downtown San Francisco In what they call the financial district in this building on the seventh floor And so we are coming to you from a little conference room just outside this space Which is our lunch room and team meeting area where we all get together every Monday to talk about what's going on with CESA So to start off, I want to talk a little bit about how I got into building apps and building products and Really, you know, I say that I've been interested in technology and education from a very early age People ask me what was my very first experience with computer programming and it was on a computer that looked like this I'm sure to many of you that doesn't even look like a computer looks like a typewriter or something it Plugged into a television set and the way you loaded Programs onto it was with a cassette tape. It was a long time ago But I started programming when I was pretty young You know younger than many of you like I was about Five years old when I started using a little computer language called logo You could give a turtle basic instructions to move around and I got really excited about it Because for me next slide It was a way to create. I think some people think of Programming or coding as you know, very like Sciencey or mathy and there's there's some aspects of that. But for me it was A way to make something make the computer do something I was excited about and I wasn't as good at painting and drawing as I was at making computers do things And so I got really excited about programming as a way to create things So that's a little bit of my background from those early days of programming I went on to study computer science in college and then Work for a bunch of different companies building products And so I've seen now over the last 20 years building all sorts of new apps from scratch So what we're gonna mostly talk about today are the sort of key steps to building an app That we went through when we built the first version of CISA and we still go through every week as we build new CISA features and before we do that I'm actually gonna ask my colleague Emily She is watching all the questions coming in and she's gonna give a couple shoutouts because we have so many classrooms joining in and Before we start going through the steps of building an app Emily Who should we give some shoutouts to because I know lots of classes listening right now? We have so many friends from all over the country. We have people visiting us from Omaha, Nebraska Mrs. Good's class miss Patrick's fourth and fifth grade class miss Daniel's class from El Paso We have friends all the way in Springfield and third graders from California And I'm individually sending messages to all of our other friends because we're so appreciative that you're all here Yeah, we're excited that you're here so Carl. Let's talk about these steps for building an app Let's get going. Let's do it. Okay, so we've sort of broken this down into six steps Think of an idea make a plan write some code test and fix beta test and then listen and redesign We're gonna talk about each one of those in a little bit more detail So the first step before you build anything is to really think of an idea and try and understand Who are you building something for or who does it help and what problem does it solve? Because if you don't know a problem you're solving you don't know how to think about a solution So we always tell everyone here to be really clear about those first two things before you even start You know your idea process of how to solve that problem and for a business it needs to solve more than One person's problem. So lots and lots of people use it. So What problem were we trying to solve by creating seesaw? Well, you know, there were a couple different problems one was that we heard from a lot of teachers that they wanted to use technology and creative ways in the classroom Not just play games or watch videos But they needed a way to sort of collect all that work and organize it and share it and then on the parent side You know, I have young kids. I wanted to help Support my kids, you know at home around the dinner table. What'd you do in school today? And I wanted to get more information about what they were doing at school So those were some of the initial problems we set out to solve by creating I'm guessing some kids have been asked that question My kids tell me that it's the worst question ever What did you do in school today? So I try and ask them better questions by having some examples of what they did Exactly. All right. So step two. Yeah, so step two once you've got a problem and an audience You can start to make a plan for how you're gonna solve that problem and a lot of times That doesn't start on the computer that starts on a piece of paper or a whiteboard You can draw some ideas out. You can do research into how other people solve similar problems You can go out and talk with the people you're trying to solve a problem for and listen understand their problem better So, you know, when we first started with Cisa, you know, we actually didn't write any code We just made some pictures in Photoshop or on a drawing program and Put together a set of slides to sort of walk through what it might look like to use Cisa You'll see this screen looks probably familiar to something you've used but a much simpler version And we just showed that to a few teachers and got their feedback Angela was actually one of the very first teachers We showed us to yeah So we sort of walked through this flow of like, oh, you can take a picture of some work We had buttons in convenient places for people to press and just got their reactions to whether they thought that was useful Once you've sort of convinced yourself that you've got an audience and a problem and a plan then You've actually got to start the programming part. We talked about that as writing code and it's basically Very specific steps to tell the computer exactly what to do Unfortunately, computers are kind of dumb. You have to tell them exactly what to do And so code is basically a step-by-step set of instructions tell the computer When you what to draw on the screen and what to do when you press a button So I think the next slide. Yeah, that's some example of code. This is code in a language called Python It's one of the languages we use here at Cisa mostly on the server side That tells the computer sort of in this case in the middle here how to look up Some of the skills that might be associated with the student post So a lot of times we get asked what coding languages do we use we use a lot of different ones So we use a language called objective C to make our iOS apps So apps for iPhones and iPads we use a language called Java on the Android platform We use HTML and JavaScript for our website Then we use a language called Python to build our servers that sort of store all the seesaw data and send that back to users Test and fix this is a big one. Yeah, so Unfortunately because you have to be so specific when telling a computer what to do you almost never get it right on the first time Even the best programmers You know get it mostly right, but have what we call bugs bugs are things that the computer is doing that you didn't intend and so in every stage of the Sort of product development process. We need to do a lot of testing We put it in front of people inside the company outside of the company and we see what Works and what doesn't work and once we've got that to a place where it's mostly working the way we thought it should work Then we do something else was called beta testing beta comes from the Greek letter beta Or it's like basically our version of B and it means that it's like one step past letter a one step past alpha it's mostly working but it's not really done yet and We then put something out in front of real users not to see whether it's working the way We thought it should work, but whether the way we thought it should work is actually right sometimes You know we make a plan and we build something and we put it in front of people and they're like, I don't know I I thought I would like that, but I don't like that at all So for example in the very first version of CISA We we knew we needed a way for students to be able to log in to CISA And so we said I know I've got it We will let them type in a like I think was a four letter code to log in and we put that in front of some teachers And they were like, you know, I don't know that seems like not the best way for kids to log in What if instead you had a QR code that you could scan? I bet some of you sign in to CISA this way. This was actually an idea from a teacher named Zach He drew this little picture and sent it to me and said, you know, you could just put a poster on the wall and scan a QR code and that That made signing in to CISA much much easier Love it. So we have a couple more steps and then we're gonna get to your question So step six listen and redesign Meaning we would do a lot of ideas and feedback from teachers and classrooms just like yours, but what else are we doing? Yeah, so I mean the thing about building software is that you're never really done You get a first version out and then you have more ideas for things to add or change And so we are constantly in the process of iterating I'm gonna skip this question for now because we want to get to the questions that they have for us live But then the last step is to launch Yeah, so once once you've got something in a place where you're excited about it you, you know Publish it to the app store or make your website live and launch it to the world and then you start all over again Once you've got something launched, you know, you're constantly in the process of being a better. Yeah So we're gonna get into some live questions. This is the most fun part, right? We want to hear from them and shout out to to the five friends that are Sticking inside from recess because they want to keep watching your webinar Carl and your information. So that's Impressive I'm more exciting So I have a question that came in before the session, so this is mr. Muhammad's class in Boston He teaches six through eighth graders And there is a student wanting to know how can I create an app and sell it for $1? Great question. Well, you need to go through all these steps Yeah, and then you can launch an app in the app store and you can decide how much you want to charge for it and You can say you want to charge a dollar for it or I think it's 99 cents technically And they will handle all the details of collecting that money and putting it in your bank account So the selling it for a dollar is easy the hard part is building an app that lots of people want to use Right, exactly. So we have so many classes so hi to miss Cooper miss flag said miss McCormick's class miss Triggs class Miss Stevens classes here. Mr. Castellano's class there here in California. I know that Miss weights class and Emily what questions should we start with we've got so many coming in So what should we jump into first? There were so many great questions, but one question that came up a lot was students wanted to know why you named it seesaw It's a great question. So when before we launched we needed to come up with a name And we did a bunch of brainstorming inside the company to pick a name We wanted something that was sort of related to schools, but not super literal Those literal names can be kind of boring. So we made a bunch of we brainstorm a bunch of names We had spiral we had locker Spark spark But we landed on seesaw because it felt visual because you see and you saw and a lot the part of seesaw was about Communicating visually and then also had this kind of back-and-forth idea that reminded us of going back and forth between school and home Great. What else Emily? What's the next question we should jump into another question that came in from some third graders They were wondering what's the best way or some of the best ways that you've seen teachers or students use seesaw Wow, okay. Well, I think we are excited any time students or teachers are using seesaw to create and To really show their learning in all sorts of different ways so, you know, we see So many different things using seesaw at centers around the classroom using seesaw to create beautiful art projects Using seesaw to document a science experiment or share a music performance There's you know, as long as you're using seesaw to create or reflect or share You're you're doing it, right? There's no wrong way to use seesaw. You're doing those things. That's a good one I have a question that I'm peeking at right now from mr. Valenti's class He wants to know how many beta tests did you do? It's a great question I honestly don't know the number because we are constantly beta testing even now We have new features that were beta testing with some users One of the things that we can do in seesaw is turn new features on for some teachers But not others which lets people Give us feedback on on features that are in this beta phase like we're done programming But we're not quite sure if they're right yet All right, Emily. What what else should we answer another a theme that came up a lot was we have a lot of Students that are really interested in learning how to code So they were wondering if you had any advice on some places that they could learn how to code or anything that could really get them started So we have on our website if your teacher goes to web dot seesaw dot me Backslash seesaw coders and you they'll get that information in the email that comes after this We do have some resources at the bottom of that page, but Carl. Do you have any? Recommendations off the top of your head. I mean there are a lot of different places to go to learn now But I'm I'm a big fan of code.org as an organization that helps make Learning to program fun and easy to get started and then once you've kind of gotten a taste for what it's like If you like it, there are lots of places to go then to learn more All right, Emily. What else should we What question you were just on it and I'm not sure who is from now, but somebody asked why is it important to learn computer science? So here's the thing I think we are living in a world where more and more things started This is from Megan Brinks. Yeah, miss. Mrs. Brinks class. Yeah We're increasingly living in a world where everything has some aspect of computers to it And I don't think everyone needs to be a programmer That doesn't have to be you know your job if that's not what you want it to be But I think it's really valuable to have a basic understanding of how computers work because more and more computers are going to be Everywhere and if you don't understand how computers work, you're just going to be doing what computers tell you to do Rather than learning how to tell computers what to do seems a lot more fun to me All right, Emily, what's next? I would say the question that came up by far the most was how long did it take you to create CISA? So from the idea to I guess when it went to the app store or when it went to schools Yeah, so it was about six months from when we first started working on it to our very first version And that was almost five years ago now So the first version took only six months But the product that you're using today has really been you know under development for five years So that's what I mean when I say, you know, you're never really done You know, we've got a team of 20 or so people working every day to make CISA better And that team has grown from you know, two people to 20 people over the last five years We're constantly working on it and listening to all of your feedback and suggestions So this is Miss Flagstaff's class saying we love CISA, are you gonna build another app soon? We're we're pretty committed to CISA for now I think There's there's so many ideas and suggestions for additions and improvements that we hear from folks That we could keep ourselves busy working on CISA for for years. So we're pretty committed to CISA for now Yeah, we have so many classes. So shout out to Miss Stevens, Mr. Bjornstedt, Miss Beltran's class, Miss Patton's class, Miss Hart's class, Miss Michael's class, Miss Fueling's class, Miss McGuffie's class, so many classes Miss Dam's class, Miss Shelp's class. We are so excited that you have spent time with us and actually Carl Carl would love to spend so much time answering questions He's actually offered to if you hop on Twitter and you mentioned CISA He's gonna be looking for questions that have the hashtag Carl and he's gonna respond to questions there So if you're thinking, oh, we didn't get our question answered or I want to make sure Carl answers my question You can get hop on Twitter Let us know mention CISA and make sure you include hashtag Carl. It's pretty quick easy hashtag, right? And he'll try to respond to some more questions there Throughout the day to day, but we know you're also really busy with all the things that you need to do at school So we are so honored that you have spent time with us here today and have joined us and again on the screen right now You are going to see a site for more resources So if you thought this was interesting and you want to learn more or different ways you can get involved with Computer science definitely check that out and thank you so much for coming today And we just are really excited to see what you create and learn and share this week So thanks everyone. Thanks so much for taking the time look forward to more questions I'll try and get back to as many as I can. Yeah. Bye everyone