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Introduction of Swift Playground in the Classroom for Visually Impaired Students. Jang Hee I. Table of contents. Profile Terms History, benefits, and its limitations Curriculum Survey Results Conclusion. Profile. Education
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Introduction of Swift Playground in the Classroom for Visually Impaired Students JangHeeI
Table of contents • Profile • Terms • History, benefits, and its limitations • Curriculum • Survey Results • Conclusion
Profile • Education • Master of Arts in Instructional Technology and Media, Teachers College, Columbia University • Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and Mathematics, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Work Experience • CEO and Founder, Cobrix LLC • Project Lead, 3D Printing Lab, Korea Institute of Science and Technology • Principal Research Scientist, Korea IT Business Promotion Agency
TERMS • Computer Science? • Computational Thinking skills? Code? • Everyone Can Code curriculum? • Swift Playground?
Terms • Computer Science As the foundation for all computing, computer science is defined as “the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles, their hardware and software designs, their implementation, and their impact on society” (Tucker et. al, 2003)
Terms • Computational Thinking Skills Computational thinking refers to the thought processes involved in expressing solutions as computational steps or algorithms that can be carried out by a computer. (Cuny, Snyder, & Wing, 2010; Aho, 2011; Lee, 2016). • Code Code is the language of technology (in other words, computational steps or algorithms) that powers technology around us.
Terms • Everyone Can Code Apple created a comprehensive Everyone Can Code curriculum to help teachers teach coding to students from kindergarten to college. With teacher guides and lessons, students can learn the basics on iPad, then advance to building real apps on Mac.
terms • Swift Playground Better watch a video than hear another word, follow the link!
History, benefits, and its limitations • Recently, there has been a surge of interest in learning to code (Resnick, 2013). Rushkoff (2010) emphasized programming as tools to potentially help children not only to read digital media but also to write such media. • In the process of learning to code, they learn coding to learn and practice thinking strategies fundamental to programming concepts such as mathematics, algorithm, and computational ideas (Brennan & Resnick 2012).
History, benefits, and its limitations • Despite national attention on computer science, there is a significant lack of educational resources for blind and visually impaired population to learn programming. The transition of programming environment to virtual interface has had an unfavorable effect on students with disabilities to learn programming, thus end up limiting their participation (Siegfried, 2006).
Curriculum • Learn to Code 1 Lesson 0 - Getting Started Lesson 1 - Think Like a Computer: Commands and Sequences Lesson 2 - Think Like a Detective: Debugging Lesson 3 - Think Efficiently: Functions and a Bit of Loops Lesson 4 - Think Logically: Conditional Code Lesson 5 - Think Again and Again: While Loops Lesson 6 - Think the Same Idea: Algorithms
Curriculum • Learn to Code 2 Lesson 7 - Think Like a NewsBot: Variables Lesson 8 - Think Like an Architect: Types Lesson 9 - Think Specifically: Parameters Lesson 10 - Think Organized: Arrays Milestone Project App Design.
Curriculum • Learn to Code 1 & 2 Teacher Guide Introduction Activity Practice Reflection Journal
Curriculum • Lesson 1:ThinkLikeaComputer:CommandsandSequences Objectives • Describe what commands and sequences are • Demonstrate the use of commands and sequences in an everyday situation • Code using commands and sequences Key Vocabulary Command, Sequence
Curriculum • Introduction
Curriculum • Activity: Hide and Seek
Curriculum • Practice Now, students will use Swift Playground and complete the puzzles. Students will develop coding skills by giving instructions using simple commands. By doing so, they’ll learn that commands are pieces of code that tell the program to perform a specific action executed in a specific order.
Curriculum • To view practice in action, follow the link!
Curriculum • Reflection How many moves did it take to solve the puzzle? If they added more moves, would they still solve the puzzle? How does thinking like a computer compare to thinking like a human? • Journal Whatisacommand and what is a sequence? What do they know about giving directions and thinking like a computer?
Curriculum • Tactile Puzzle Worlds
curriculum • Tactile Puzzle Worlds
Survey results • Used vs. Not used, no significant difference but those who have used it expressed the slightly lower ratings than those who have not when it comes to student’s interaction with Swift Playground, the app.
Survey results • Suggestions • Hands on learning tools (for an example, robots) to work with Swift Playground • Tangible methods to understand the problem
Conclusion • Unlike coding tools not appropriate for blind and visually impaired learners, Swift Playground is a tool that could maintain thinking practices shared with CT for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas and that are accessible to blind learners. • Yet, TVIs can make the best of it when…
Conclusion • Not enough TVIs have explored Everyone Can Code curriculum yet! Also, there is a weak consensus what resources TVIs need to further develop Everyone Can Code curriculum. • Build an online community and a support system among TVIs to share guidance and support each other with instructional practices to teach computer science to blind and visually impaired students (for an example, ask Apple to provide additional resources as a group of TVIs).
Conclusion • Support resources are lengthy and sometimes hard to understand, especially you are not tech-savvy TVI. Can an unexperienced TVI teach beyond the basic concepts of computational thinking? • Learn, Discuss, Share! It echoes the past suggestion; it is going to take a while to understand how Swift Playground and its curriculum works if you are novice TVI to Swift Playground, so keep a habit of learning and reviewing the materials by yourself and with your colleagues.
Conclusion • Would Swift Playground and its support materials be enough to keep students interested in and engaged in the lessons? • Be more tactile and use hands-on classroom activities rather than solely hold onto Swift Playground throughout the class (Swift Playground is an app that helps to teach computational thinking skills; however, there are other proven ways to teach computational thinking skills effectively, for an example, CS unplugged).