Summer App Development

(Reflection)

Mr. Frausto
Aug 22, 2017 · 9 min read

This summer, through One Summer Chicago, A Knock at Midnight, and Chicago Public School’s CS4All, several youth from the city, ranging in ages 15–19, were given the opportunity to work on application development. Students were paid to learn about computer programming, developing an application, and then uploading the app to an iPad or iPhone at Gage Park High School in the city’s southwest side.

Throughout this narrative, the young people working during the summer are described as youth and students while the staff are described as teachers and instructors because of the amount of learning that took place the roles of employee and boss often times much more resembled that of teacher and student.

Gage Park’s program website’s home page.

Swift and Xcode

Apple Inc developed its own programming language called Swift. (https://developer.apple.com/swift/) Students learned about Swift and how to code and program using the Apple program called Xcode.

Apple Inc has also developed a full curriculum, which they call, “Everyone Can Code (https://www.apple.com/ae/education/everyone-can-code/),” to expose students to Swift with something they call a Playground. Within this environment students are guided through several coding concepts like variables, constants, functions, etc, and in particular how these operate within Xcode. Students are also guided through several tasks such as creating a

The applications that students created were developed within Xcode using Swift.

Students and Staff

Who are we? Who were we? And who was involved in the program? Twenty students, who came mostly from Gage Park High School, the surrounding Englewood neighborhood, or further south, with a few students from the west side of city. Students were mostly African American along three Latino students. During an initial survey about a third of the students had never done any coding before. A few had some experience with JavaScript on Khan Academy. Most had only really done Photoshop in previous coding classes. Needless to say, all of the students were completely unfamiliar with Swift and Xcode, but they were all very excited about learning, in particular in relation to application development. Everyone wanted to make an app, get into the app store, and start earning money, or as they kept saying, “Making bank!”

The program had two instructors to assist the students as troubleshooting needs occurred and to facilitate the student’s navigation of Apple’s curriculum. Their task was to ensure students were able to problem solve and persevere when things became difficult or confusing, which happened a lot. They also had to figure out ways to make the material engaging and accessible in particular for students who had never done coding before or for whom the amount of reading required took its toll. The instructors found programs like Code.org, which is also widely used in CPS and worldwide, to engage the youth in coding at a much less text heavy environment. Instructors also provided guidance as far as presentation best practices along with regular engagement around matters of workplace etiquette.

Youth and staff worked together for seven weeks with the goal that there would be apps at the end of the program to present. A small digital community was created to solve real world problems through app development.

Getting Started

To facilitate the teaching of the material, along with keeping track of day-to-day activities and tasks, a website was created, “Summer App Development(tinyurl.com/sumappdev). A Twitter account (https://twitter.com/summerappdev) was created under the handle @summerappdev to highlight and keep track of our activity during the seven weeks. An initial survey (https://goo.gl/forms/Q2CtUuvPw85kKMmh2) was conducted to gauge where students where at the beginning as far as coding and technology use went. From this survey, we found that about a third had never done any coding before.

The initial survey helped us realize that students weren’t going to be able to just jump into Xcode and work on Swift without any background experience. The youth was then provided with accounts for Code.org. In pairs, students worked doing paired coding in the Accelerated Course. Soon students were engaged in creating loops, functions, and then nesting loops and functions within loops and functions.

Here the setup should be described briefly. Students had access to iMac desktops and MacBook Pro laptops. There were enough devices for each student, but most preferred to work in groups or in pairs. The room utilized was Gage Park High School’s library, which provided with flexible seating. It was an ideal situation to have couches and stools along with chairs at iMac stations for students to rotate and move around the room. This also provided for a very dynamic working environment that much more resembled that of a studio lab than that of a school computer lab.

Brandon examines his group’s prototype design before making edits in Xcode.

Up and Running

So how did students get going? Students began coding in Code.org in order to attain a common language in a much less intimidating manner than Xcode and Swift, which are much more text dependent. Ideally, students, if iPads were available, would start Apple’s Swift Playgrounds, so as to learn Swift language right away. Eventually students opened up Xcode and went to through Everyone Can Code lessons. Instructors roamed the room and assisted students who got stuck or confused, assisting particularly with clarifying thinking and helping students persevere through a problem in their program/code.

Students engaged initially in group discussions about applications and their purposes. At this point, the youth began to divide into groups to work together on developing an app. Students were guided by instructors to unpack the purpose, users, budget, and functionality behind their favorite apps. Then they created lists of apps they wish there was an app for already. This created our needs. From here, groups selected which app they were to develop. Initially one group wanted to develop an app entitled Lurking where clients would be able to obtain access to significant other’s social media accounts in order to view who they were chatting with and what they were deleting, and in essence lurk. After chuckling and gasping a little at the idea, which everyone agreed there was a market for and perhaps, arguably, even a need, the group discussed the legality of the app, and concluded it best to change to concept to something else entirely. Plenty of teachable moments like this arose during the seven weeks.

Again because of students lack of experience with Xcode, it was decided it best for students to create a prototype in Google Slides. Students, this way, would have a starting point for creating storyboards and view controllers in Xcode. Google Slides as Code.org provided a much less intimidating and familiar space for students to create something that provided space to create a prototype with simple links, buttons, and icons. At the end, students published their prototypes to the web and embedded them into websites they created.

Maintaining Interest and Supporting Youth

Kimberly reviews her groups Main.storyboard in Xcode.

Once the program was up and running, instructors and mentor had to make sure youth were kept engaged and on task. Students regularly complained about there being too much reading involved in particular in Xcode. Frustration levels reached and it wasn’t even 9 o’clock, meaning that student(s) was in for a long day. This made pacing and variety of activities extremely important along with flexibility in space and seating. All but one student completed the program, and all the groups completed the task of uploading a functional app to an iPad.

Some things learned were that the instructors could not always be the only teachers, but since students were very inexperienced themselves, we relied heavily on YouTube for solving our problems, and helping us troubleshoot. For this end, videos had to be ripped and placed into a shared folder in a Google Drive. This was done because CPS blocks YouTube and videos wouldn’t be accessible online without creating hotspots, or students watching on their phones, which was too small to read any of the code. This meant instructors had to anticipate students’ needs.

Pairs of students created an application from watching videos on YouTube as well from videos found in the same drive folder. The apps were all basic Xcode apps for creating a calculator, a camera, a to-do list, audio player, and other basic apps. Because of limited time (seven weeks), students could not afford to go through the whole Everyone Can Code program before developing their app. Certain skills would have to be obtained creating an app. As a whole group, the instructors guided everyone while they worked from laptops in creating a “Hello World” app, which basically had the user input name press button and then label would print “Hello + (input name)”. The beauty of this app is that it has students go through adding an image view for background picture, a label, a button, and a text field. In order for this app to become functional, one line of code is required, which makes the text typed into the text field be revealed in label when the button is tapped.

After this, students focused in six groups on their main app, which they would pitch on August 10th. While working on their apps, something quite tragic and unexpected occurred. One group pitched their idea for an app they titled, “We Can We Shall We Will Stop World Violence.” The app is designed for users to enter quotes, share videos, photos, memes, and narratives around the issue of gun violence. The group felt the issue was important and that young people needed a space to confront and expose the issue from their point of view. About a week and a half before the end of the program, one of the main members and creators of this application lost her brother due to gun violence. She was the first to witness his body laying on their living room floor after a car driving by randomly shot into her house. It was mentioned and suggested to her to take time off if she needed to, and she responded that she preferred to be working on her app because it helped keep her mind off things and gave her a place to stay. Her group successfully uploaded their app to an iPad, and hopefully one day it’ll be in the app store.

Final App Presentations

Students presented their applications at the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation. Being the culminating event/showcase, students prepared a presentation to pitch their app concept to tech professionals, teachers, students, and other interested parties. They also prepared a poster highlighting their app and its function(s), along with a website to which they attached a QR code and Tiny URL for easier access, so that people could get a better understanding of their app without having to actually use it. All groups had a functioning app on iPad Pro’s, which they allowed spectators to peruse as they evaluated their app’s functionality. The event was just like being in a science fair with spectators visiting each group and asking questions about the app. Karen Lewis, president of the CTU, was also in attendance, along with representatives from Apple, and folks from CS4All and the mayor’s office.

Girls present their app, Girl Code, to Ms. Ida Brown from A Knock at Midnight.

But this was not the final, final event. A Knock at Midnight hosted a closing ceremony to celebrate all of the programs the organization had hosted this summer, Application Development being one of them. Participants shared what they had learned and accomplished during the summer in their respective programs. The event was much more of a family type setting, and concluded with a feast, which included soul food classics to add to the family style ambience. Students left the event talking about needing to continue the program next year in order to complete their apps and placing them in the app store. Students learned a variety of tech based strategies and skills for prototyping and presenting their ideas through self-created digital artifacts for others to engage with like apps and websites, all of which empower our youth to elevate themselves from being mere consumers of media, but to also becoming developers and makers of media.

Final Application URL’s

Below are links to websites each group created for their application.

)

Mr. Frausto

Written by

Tech, Bilingual, & Urban Ed. Social Justice & Poetry. Coding & Web Design. postcursive.com urbanpoetrees.com tinyurl.com/tontipoetry tonticompute.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade