I have always wanted to live in a Jetson's style home of the future filled with robots, assistants, and other tech that would allow me to yell out commands and have something happen, such as unlocking my doors, controlling the lights, or even setting the termperature.
My school district just finished our school year and now that I have had a couple of days to review and reflect upon the fantastic year my students and I had learning Swift I am left with one major thought: creativity was the key to motivating my students to continue to want to learn more Swift and to keep coding.
I recently attended EdCamp Cleveland and during a session on coding in the classroom an exasperated primary grade teacher (I think she said 3rd grade) said "Does all of this block coding really lead to anything?
iPad or Chromebook - the technology is a tool for educators to use to create a more engaging and dynamic learning experience for our students that they otherwise could not have without the technology. Good teaching is still a requirement regardless of the technology tool.
There is much great educational content on YouTube. There are great TED Talks and "How-to" videos that our staff use in their classrooms as supplements to their lessons. Our students...
[TextExpander](https://textexpander.com) is a very helpful Mac that saves me time on my Mac every time I use my Mac. There are 4 things, as I see it, that TextExpander does and does very well on a Mac: However, I spend as much or more time working on my iPads than I do on my Macs.
I was at a conference last July, and one of the other coding teachers said that in order for him to teach coding using Swift in his country (Poland) that he would have to justify, " Why Swift?" Initially I thought, "Well, why not? Apple has created this new language. They make great hardware and software for us to use when we teach." Now that I have had some time to reflect upon that simple, but powerful question, I think that I have a much better, more well-reasoned answer.