It was a very long and anticipated wait for Joseph A. Foran High School’s brand new App Design and 3D Animation & Gaming lab to be set up, but it is finally done! My name is Aaron Czarnecki and am please to have been selected to write my view of Trinity's Mobile CSP (Computer Science Principles) course outline and teachings for the 2013-2014 School year at Foran High School here in Milford, CT. I will be providing you a quick update to catch you up to speed since I have missed many blog dates and had a very late start to the school year without a room and without any computers to work, so here goes...
I was selected by Justine LaSala from Joseph A. Foran High School to be trained as a new Mobile CSP Apps Design teacher along with teaching 3D Animation & Gaming for the 2013-2014 school year. That said, I was sent for outstanding training at Trinity College in Hartford, CT being taught by my instructors Ralph Morelli, Pauline Lake, Chinma Ucha, Trishan De Lanerolle and many more including special guest from the Mayor of Hartford, MIT and Google. We were using MIT’s App Inventor 2 Beta Software. This software is still in Alpha stage currently not released to the public as a whole yet but, soon will be. I’m happy to report that while at Trinity myself and my 9 other selected classmates in training throughout the state helped solve a few minor and some major problems with the development of MIT’s App Inventor 2 software.
I myself am a self-taught coder using Adobe Dreamweaver as my method of choice but have near zero experience working with App Design code. I often shied away from it because it seemed too hard in the past. I’ve worked with multiple SDK’s from both Google, Apple and Windows platform but, they were all too complicated to use and often felt myself overwhelmed. Naturally, I drifted away sticking to my web design outlet of choice. Until I took this course at Trinity using MIT’s App Inventor 2 software, I quickly started to see the light of how an app are created.
After working and understanding how the MIT’s App Inventor works using blocks of code and understanding that it’s not about the code itself ,it’s about the process that’s important, I naturally started to pick it up. It was slow going at first but, then app after app after app I learned that it’s really not that hard to make an app if you think logically STEP by STEP what it is you want to accomplish. Once you have mastered that concept, the rest is easy. The new problem comes from finding the time to start developing all the apps in your head out to the real world and keep them updated.
Needless to say I had a blast at the Mobile CSP boot camp this summer and have been teaching this course at Joseph A. Foran High School in Milford, CT this year for the first time. Being that it’s my first time learning Code in 8 weeks, and now having to teach it was a bit daunting at first but, my instructors gave me so much material and have everything structured in place that you “Can’t mess up” seriously, if you go step by step or even jump around the structure that’s laid out you’ll still be able to get your fundamentals across to students that they will understand everything and be 100% ready to develop apps themselves.
Here is my outline that I have been following thus far without fail on my personal website I have created: http://www.alczar.com/moodle *Click Login as Guest Button to see content.
- Welcome (code.org) <- watch the 9min video, it’s really good :)
- What is computer science?
- Data: Why do computers use binary numbers?
- Abstraction
- Internet: Cloud Computing
- Error Detection
- Animation, Randomness
- Abstraction: Procedures
- What is an Algorithm?
- Do you believe in Magic?
- Digital Explosion!
- Randomness & Modeling
- Pseudo Randomness
- Algorithms: Logo
Thus far, every activity has been a success 120%. I have just about every student engaged in learning the material and actually understanding it too! We just wrapped up our first Collaborative Creative Programing Project CCPP1 last week, I was pleasantly surprised at some of the students work, and their creations based of what the skills I taught them thus far.
Although we only have 6 Nexus Tablets to test right now, Hopefully we will receive more so, students can test out apps at a faster pace. This is the main seller with this course to be honest, having the ability to develop code and scan a QR (Quick Response) code and have it show up on your device immediately is amazing! no other platform has this out there on the market yet… and students are really enjoying seeing ther results live on the actual tablet itself.
Some of my students’ app creations include:
· What’s your number app a fortune telling app to find out your biological life number and it’s meaning based off your date of birth.
· Food Pyramid app helping students learn the food pyramid quickly and easily with the tap of your finger.
· Deaf not mute app that allows students who have trouble talking or pronouncing words input text into a field and have the app speak your message.
There are many more that I don’t have time to list now but, overall are outstanding based on the stuff students know now. I can only imagine what will happen when the next CCPP2 comes around and see what student dream up knowing more skillsets.
I must go for now but, will return with a much cleaner review and more detailed description of how everything is going. Sorry, for the delay and I hope you enjoyed this first blog post.
If you have question feel free to contact me about the course and how it’s going or if you need help with how to bring coding to your classroom.
Cheers,
Aaron
Technology Education Teacher
