All posts in teaching

Five FTP connection issues, and how to fix them

June 11, 2015 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Courses, The Complete Web Developer Course, Tips

For those of you new to web development, one of the more common challenges before even getting stuck into learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the plethora of other technologies awaiting your new-found skills, is just being able to log in to get your work uploaded.

FTP is a venerable old method to upload your work to web servers. It stands for File Transfer Protocol, and nearly every web host in the world supports it.

In the Complete Web Developer Course, Rob has an FTP tutorial chapter that shows you one way of using FTP with the Firefox browser and the FireFTP add-on to easily update your site files.

Things don’t always go according to plan however. Here are five of the most common issues students have when connecting to their free Eco Web Hosting packages with FTP, and how to resolve them.

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Andy Dunn
Andy Dunn is a web developing, photo taking, blog writing Wulfrunian based in Cambridge. He can generally be found on two wheels.

My experiences with Code Club (Part 1)

September 1, 2013 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Uncategorized

This is the first in a series of posts on my experiences volunteering with Code Club at St Lukes Primary School in Cambridge. My first session is in two weeks, so this is just my impressions before I start.

First off, I love the idea. Coding is just beginning to gain traction in UK schools, and as a concept, using coders to teach has huge benefits for the students, teachers, and the volunteers themselves. I’m really looking forward to getting started.

Second, the website is excellent. Signup was fast and straightforward - I contacted one school in my area, who it turned out had just taken on another volunteer. After a couple of weeks I was notified about St Luke’s - I sent an email through the website and after a couple of emails and a phone call we were set for September. A great experience.

Third, I had a brief exchange with one of the founders over email - they contacted me about CRBs (a crucial thing to get right) and were friendly and approachable, another big tick.

Fourth, the materials look great. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to approach Python with ten year olds, but the materials are well made, attractive and the coding tasks seem engaging and interesting. I’ll have more feedback when I try them out, but for now I’m confident that I have some great content to deliver.

Finally, they have done a great job of publicising themselves. I’ve been surprised by the number of people that have heard of them, and their growth in terms of the number of schools on board in a little over a year is impressive. Write-ups in the press have been very positive. They had a good idea at the right time and have implemented it well.

I’ll write more about my experiences after my first session - if you’re running a club or have any advice, please do get in touch in the comments or through Twitter.

Teaching students to build apps

August 27, 2013 / No Comments / Posted in: Uncategorized

Coding is slowly becoming accepted as something that our children need to learn. Not only are the skills of coding needed for the UK to compete in international markets, but coding is becoming recognised as a way to teach skills of logic, organisation and design. It’s even been called the new Latin.

So far so good. But there is a problem here - when I’ve taught coding to kids, while there has been a fair amount of excitement at being able to control a computer in a new way, there has been a disconnect between what they can do with code and what they want to achieve. We’re selling the idea that coding can enable them to create apps, games, and websites, but the early lessons are a real turn off form many as they learn how to make text bold, add the title to a page and open links in new windows. Even after a few weeks’ of lessons, most students are a long way from seeing the big picture of how they can use these languages to create.

This is why I am going to be working with students at the Stephen Perse Foundation to build apps directly, without any coding. Programming is really just a means to an end, just as we use language to describe emotions and tell stories. For me, the most interesting (and most difficult) part of making an app is the design and content. An app or website has to be attractive and functional, have great content, and allow the user to do, learn or enjoy something in a way they can’t do with any of the myriad apps that are already available - this is a big ask.

I’ve created a system that will allow the students to focus on the content and interaction and build apps that allow them to teach others a topic (school-based or otherwise) without any coding. I’ll give more information on the app in a future post, and I’m going to be posting regularly with updates on how the project is going, and what the feedback is from the students.

If you’ve done anything like this before, I’d love to hear from you - just leave a comment here or message me on Twitter.

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