How To Go About Teaching A Teacher To Code?

So, I was emailed a few days ago by the assistant head of the junior school at my school asking for me to come over to his office and discuss making an iPad app for the kids as they're all getting them next year. Initially, I thought he was going to get me to make it, (which wouldn't be too surprising really, the IT people are so bad it's not even funny), however, once I started talking to him it became apparent that he wanted to make it. The problem with this is, he has no idea how to code or doing anything related to making an app. He said he had tried a few things, what they were I don't know but from what I understand there are drag and drop app making websites, so I told him to try Xcode.

I've been thinking about this the past few days and I really have no idea what to do. He's the sort of person who wants to do everything on his own. So, my question to you is, what on earth should I do? If you have any 'how to code 101' type tutorials or anything let me know.

If he does end up making the app it will most likely be terrible (sounds a bit harsh, but it's probably true), but I wouldn't push trying to make the app yourself, that'll probably go down really badly. He might in the future find this all too hard and come back to you anyway, so I'd just give him a few recommendations on tutorials and leave him to it. Books I find are really good - I learnt Objective C from one (it was for mac programming, not iOS though). The same guy who wrote that book also wrote one for iOS app dev (Amazon link). Second best things I find are videos on YouTube - I've never looked into these for iOS dev, so I can't really judge on any good ones. At a quick glance, this looks ok.

Another thing you could do if he want's to take his time is recommend learning the very basics of C (not anything like Python or Lua - the syntax is just too different and will likely be confronting) first just to get to grips with syntax, variables, functions, pointers, etc.

I wouldn't recommend learning from online tutorials if he's had no previous coding experience - they usually delve into everything too quickly and don't give very concrete examples that most quality books will to assure him of core concepts.

iPads? :o/>

ZudoHackz, on 05 September 2013 - 01:50 PM said:

iPads? :o/>

You know, those flat interactive things with round corners?