Chicago Day 9

Today at Ridgewood the students have been developing their app prototypes within their teams. This session was led by the Apple Campus leaders and some really interesting ideas are starting to take shape.

Designing the app layout, adding logos, navigation tabs and icons.

The next two workshops focused on applying code to an app design and these were delivered by Mr Svetlick, the Computer Science teacher at Ridgewood.

Our IT pathway students really enjoyed learning all about the process of choosing UI (user interface) elements, setting ID properties and then adding events driven programming to make their apps interactive.

The students were given the task of pair programming using MacBooks whereby one is the ‘driver’ and entered the code and one is the ‘navigator’ and observes and tests for any bugs in the code. They then switch roles.

Once again, Ridgewood High School have made us feel at home, treating us to cakes and refreshments at breaks and lunch. What’s really special though, is how well the students are bonding with each other. Friendships are being made well beyond our time in Chicago, and that is as rewarding as the many other fantastic achievements.

This evening we went out for dinner at the Enterrium at the Woodfield Mall, followed by a 90 minute session in the arcades where students had a pass to go on any games they desired!

As you can imagine, they loved it!

Sometimes you just don’t want to be experiencing one of the most spectacular cultural metropolises in the world, you just want to be playing video games! Well, as you can see that’s what our digital students wanted anyway. It’s also clear that the staff had a fab time too! Especially Mr Lyons and Mr Slater!

Finally, we must say a huge thank you once again to our guide Gilbert and bus driver Onka. They have been incredible! The students love them, they are so much fun, and they have helped make the trip such a positive experience.