Adsy: App design

One of the things I love most about twitter is the chance to hear about new technology early on. It makes me seem cutting edge to my friends pupils the fact that most of the time I am pretty much a total dork. While doing some late night twittering due to my food poisoning last week I came across some mentions of a website called adsy. It promised to be a web platform through which I could make apps. I checked it out, and having watched the instructional video managed to understand it.

While what you can achieve is simple; you can only include text, pictures of videos but there is no way to give the user a way to input their own text, what I do like about it is the way it teaches children some of the basics of how one would go about building an app. In my PSHE lessons where we had been discussing revision as the school exams are looming I let them spend some time having a go at designing one as a revision tool. It was very easy and once set up they were able to get on with their apps on our school ipads. In my pipedream I had imagined they would all finish in 1/2 hour and we could share them with each other. It did take a lot longer and none of them finished but I think it was still a worthwhile exercise. There were a couple of children who thought it was seriously exciting. Best for me was the girls who got into it. I was reading today about the digital apartheid which will exist for those who do not understand how to code.

#ISCICT @IanYorston outlines the future problem in relation to those who can code and those that cannot. pic.twitter.com/JyBHCtilYQ

— Nick Dennis (@nickdennis) November 5, 2014

This morning I was reading all about Reshma Saujani who set up Girls who code an initiative which tries to get girls to learn to code. I feel like my use of adsy with my girls was a chance to get them to see that coding isn't something done by spotty boys in hoodies, it can be done by them too. They were seriously excited about their creations, about putting in videos and music, and as yesterday was Teach Girls to code day, that seemed apt!

If you are interested, here is a link to the app I made with one of the boys. We were so keen we finished it in break time. Score.

Have you tried adsy? I would love to see any of the apps you have made.

Reflections on Google in Education Conference: October 2014

I went on a conference last week. It was the first day of my half term and I travelled all the way up to London with a heavy suitcase that I had to lug around with me. This to me is evidence that I must have thought I could get something from it! Also evidence that I was going to sunny Sicily the next day. Now I am not someone who gives up holiday easily, so do so unless it was for something really special. It was a Google in education summit. As with the summit I attended in May I got a lot from it.

A few things which I have been pondering during my holiday have been the following.

• How to start using videos more in my lessons.
• To stop telling my students to just ‘research’ on an ipad
• To work out how to start using coding in lessons.

The other great thing was to spend time chatting with other teachers and hearing their perspective on technology and what they have been doing in the classroom. I’ve been really thinking about how to improve my coding which is so basic and heard about a website called Computing at Schools that has lots of different courses I could go on. So far they mostly seem to be a very long way away, but I will keep checking back. I definitely want to understand how the Raspberry Pi works.

With videos I have set up a Youtube channel which I am going to get going this week and I will try exploring some flipped learning with some of my older students.