OrchardNest

For those who aren’t as interested, they’re still going to be learning determination, perseverance and trial and error. from the ReMarker, February 2021, “In a Growing Industry” by William Fitzpatrick Junior of St. Mark’s...

We held some live coding sessions during EU Code Week 2020. They included unplugged activities, away from the iPad, and then a follow-along session of coding in various Swift Playgrounds. Now, these sessions were a ton of fun in the...

Just recently, the Swift team announced a new effort to promote diversity in Swift. As someone who tries to make sure people who want to learn how to code get the best introduction they can, I love this effort. We, as a software...

It has been a wild and woolly ride, but you can now watch all TEN days of A Quick Start to Code with Swift follow-along sessions! Steve and I recorded the last few extra days and posted them a little earlier. Follow-Along Coding Sessions...

Steve and I are back with Earlston Primary School in Scotland to talk about finding patterns, from the Quick Start to Code with Swift PDF from Apple. We talk a lot about finding patterns and turning those patterns we use repeatedly into...

So you’ve started your coding career, or maybe just progressed it a little. Now you’re looking for where else to go to learn coding. Well, we have good news! We’ve taken a look at the other days in the Quick Start to Code...

Join us live today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time for another follow-along coding session! For context (and last week’s recording), you can visit our mini-site: Day Nine: Play your own game We follow Apple’s Quick Start to Code with...

Join us live today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time for another follow-along coding session! For context (and last week’s recording), you can visit our mini-site: Day Six: Track the gems We follow Apple’s Quick Start to Code with Swift...

Join us live today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time for another follow-along coding session! For context (and last week’s recording), you can visit our mini-site: Day Four: Get loopy We follow Apple’s Quick Start to Code with Swift PDF...

Join us live today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time for another follow-along coding session! For context (and last week’s recording), you can visit our mini-site: Day Three: Get groovy We follow Apple’s Quick Start to Code with Swift...

Join us live today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time for another follow-along coding session! We’re back again this week for more coding fun. So if you missed our sessions last week or just want to join the live session this week, tune in!...

NOW we’re talking! Let’s get down to games! The number one question I get in my coding classes is from wide-eyed students, who come up to me and say, “Hang on… with this stuff, can I write games?” And the...

Big day for us today, I hope you’ll join us live at 9:45am, Irish/UK time! You can give your poor, tired legs a break today, as we’ll be thinking about our dances of the last few days more than doing them. Unplugged Steve is...

We’re back again today, a bit like a loop, in fact! Join us at 9:45am Irish/UK time. We hope you didn’t work up too much of a sweat yesterday with the dancing, because we’re back dancing again today. Unplugged Steve is...

Have we got a good one for you today! Today is all about dancing. Steve will take you on a journey around Newcastle, dancing the session away! Join us live for it at 9:45am, Irish/UK time! Dance: The Code Week 2020 Theme This year’s...

Well, today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for, the start of EU Code Week (well, for us)! Join us LIVE, today at 9:45am, Irish/UK time! Day One: Meet Byte Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we’ll meet Byte today on...

Are you ready for some coding? Monday morning we’ll be kicking off our Follow-Along Coding sessions with Swift and iPads! We’ve got a really fun session lined up. The Theme The theme today is all about commands and introducing...

EU Code Week is nearly upon us and I’m sure, for many of you, your head has been all over the place this school year! This surely has been an unprecedented return to school, and our sessions being online this year are a testament to...

So our “How to” session is in the books. If you didn’t manage to catch our live session, you can watch the recording. We covered the rough outline of the sessions, what will happen each day and also what’ll happen...

Here we go, EU Code Week begins early! We’ll be live today at 4pm, Irish/UK time, talking about how to host these coding sessions in your own classroom. You can still register, though it’s not necessary:...

By now, you know EU Code Week is coming, you can feel it like a train coming down the tracks. In order to help you get set up in advance, I’ve made a short video (6 minutes) to help you make sure you have all you need on your iPad to...

EU Code Week is right around the corner (10-25th of October), so here’s a bit of info about the free sessions I’ll be running with Steve Bunce. What is it? We’ll be presenting follow-along coding sessions that follow the...

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve got a big EU Code Week special coming up really soon. And I’ve also mentioned that it’s not just for schools. So if you happen to fall into one of these two categories: You’re in a...

Our sessions for EU Code Week aren’t just for classrooms! Just in case you were looking at all the materials, like the Using this Site in Class page, and thinking it was aimed at schools only, I added a new page: Using this Site at...

EU Code Week 2020 is from the 10th to the 25th of October this year. This isn’t some odd quirk that leaves actually weeks in Europe a whole 8 days longer than elsewhere in the world; it’s to let those folks who get a week off...

For many of you, you’re arriving back at school over these last few weeks (or days, even). Hopefully your coding journey won’t end with the return to school. After all, you can apply coding to a lot of your schoolwork. While...

📹 In case you’re missing our live sessions every week day terribly, keep in mind you can still visit any one of the videos we did over the last few months at Coding at Home. This page has links off to the various YouTube playlists,...

I’m a big fan of turtle graphics, as you probably know. You can see the effects of your code pretty clearly with most version, from LOGO to Python to Swift. This is a huge win for learners, because you can draw some pretty cool stuff...

Like yesterday, we’re taking a little hiatus. In the meantime, we have a ton of back catalog to trawl through. But no live coding today. Teaching Swift If you’re a teacher, we added a post yesterday about teaching swift. We...

By the way, if you’re a teacher and you teach Swift, or want to teach Swift in your classroom, I’ve created a new Slack instance called, fittingly enough: Teaching Swift. [You can skip all the rest and hit this invite like:...

There will be no live coding today! Okay, okay, stop crying. Please. You’re making a scene. It’s embarrassing. Flattering, but embarrassing. Okay. You good? Everything okay? Man, you’re really getting into this coding...

Join us today when we approach one of my all-time favorite playgrounds, Cipher, at 1pm, Irish time! Recap: Sensor Arcade We said goodbye to Sensor Arcade yesterday with a bit of cheat codes. We’ll explore the Sensor Arcade...