Academy Wrap-up
What did you learn? What did we learn? How did the whole thing go and would you do it again?
by Mark Taoilinn
Over the past 7 weeks RunRev have been running a pioneering project to teach new LiveCode users how to write a mobile app, from scratch. This project, the first of its kind for RunRev, was called the LiveCode Summer Academy and was a huge success.
At 5pm British Summer Time on 9th May 2011 the first batch of LiveCode Academy students were sitting comfortably in their own homes or offices and signing on to the first of 7 unique webinars. The students came from all over the world: Tana’s day was just getting started in Vancouver while Mike was having lunch and getting ready for hurricane season in Florida; meanwhile Goncalo in Portugal was enjoying the early evening with thoughts of some good wine later that night. In Cape Town, in London, in Helsinki and Amsterdam the working day was just drawing to a close. It was past bedtime when Glenn joined in from Australia and the sun was only just rising in Hawaii as Mike signed on. Students came from all levels of coding experience, including none, but they all had two things in common: Firstly, they were all new to LiveCode and secondly they were all keen to learn how to harness this simple English-like programming language to make their own mobile apps.
What they learned
The progress made by these students over the 7 weeks that followed was staggering. Every Tuesday, at 5pm BST, those who could would log on to watch Elanor Buchanan or one of her team present on everything from coding basics to databases to multimedia and even deploying to your device. Those who couldn’t log on at that time, like WC in Hong Kong, caught up during the week by watching the recorded sessions. The students completed a set of preparatory readings each week and were set ‘homework’ to complete for the next session. Sample stacks and solutions were provided.
Over the 7 weeks of the Academy the students were shown how to make their own iOS/Android app from scratch. The LiveCode made Ticked Off App taught students how to make an interface to create, edit and delete tasks in a task list, mark tasks as complete, phone from within the app and even access google maps. Lets say the students decided to all meet in Edinburgh for a post academy party - they could all use the app to schedule it, call each other from within the app to arrange the meet up and find their way to the venue via google maps from within the app they have had made themselves. Quite impressive after only 7 weeks of learning a brand new language, from scratch!
The more enterprising students can take the app away and modify it further, especially for the iPhone. By adding a few iOS externals and expanding the database they could hook into the address book and calendar and make a really neat little app for personal and commercial use.
A close knit community
What impressed Elanor and the whole RunRev team the most was how focused and dedicated the students were. Best of all the students really engaged not just with the material or with Elanor, but with each other. The Academy had its own dedicated forum where the students quickly entered into the LiveCode ‘community spirit’ by helping each other as they learned. So when Geoff from Cambridge posted to the forum towards the end of week two saying “My brain hurts” he got 6 pages of support from his fellow academy students with hints, tips and encouragements to continue. Geoff did continue and finished the course with everyone else last week. Well done Geoff! Others, like Paul in Bristol, enjoyed the course so much they introduced their friends to it. He later reported that “both have been interested and enjoyed the course”. Good stuff! Or when Caio, who is from the United Arab Emirates and has no background in IT whatsoever, needed an app that nobody else had made and decided to make it for himself, David and Barry were there to help him see it through to the end. Of course there was a team of people here in RunRev who were administering the forums and keeping an eye on the questions, but more often than not our dedicated, creative and hardworking students had already given answers to their fellows before we got a chance to.
When David Glass, from California, started the Academy he was getting ready to work on an asset management tool for a construction company. LiveCode was the best tool for him to do this job.
“The ease with which I can add graphic elements to my UI using LiveCode means the UI comes together faster, and more cleanly, than it would if I were working with another tool”
he explained. David came across LiveCode back when it was still called Revolution but didn’t have the time learn it. The Summer Academy was his chance to learn all about stacks and cards and the LiveCode syntax and to make use of them in his business. David was perhaps the most involved of all the students in the forum, and certainly one of the quickest to help his fellow students. He explains why working together on the forums so key to his mastering the language:
"There’s a post in the Summer Academy forum where somebody asks me something like ‘how do you know all this stuff’, and I answer with something along the lines of, “I have a project coming up, and I need to know as much as possible.”
The Summer Academy, and all the forum posts by others made that possible. Every time somebody posted with ‘how do I...?; I was thinking, ‘I don’t know, how do you...?; and I would go try to figure it out. I have a raft of small example stacks now, because sooner or later (probably sooner) I’m going to *need* to do whatever the original question was about.
What they thought of the academy
We’re really proud of all the students who completed the LiveCode Summer Academy. It was a great experience for us and we’re thrilled to have been able to share it with such a dedicated bunch of new developers. It’s rekindled a sense of enthusiasm in us and really highlighted that we’re on the track. Jerry (from Arizona) feels the same. Jerry started to use LiveCode in the past but struggled with the learning curve of switching from C, C# and VBA. “Now that I have gone through this academy, I have renewed excitement and have a much greater understanding of LiveCode” - he says. Mike (on Facebook) said “The summer academy has been incredible. The value to this online school is priceless. The people who have joined the summer academy are like-minded and everyone helps everyone. Runrev is doing a fantastic job.“
And John (from the Netherlands) adds “I love this course! I learned so much. Not too slow or fast, great to be able to view the video again and again. very good documentation” before summing up the feelings of us all: “if it could only go on forever?”
Sadly the Summer Academy can’t go on forever, but that sense of community doesn’t need to end here. Help from RunRev and experience from other users is always in what Academy goers were calling the ‘big boy forums’ and Summer Academy students can still meet, chat and share with each other the LiveCode Summer Academy Facebook page.
To all of our great students, thank you! I’m confident that we will see great things from you all in the future and I look forward to sharing your successes with the rest of the community.
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About the Author
Mark Taoilinn is Sales and Marketing Manager for RunRev Ltd.
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