RunRev on Campus
Presenting LiveCode to Educators at Campus Technology event in Boston

by Mark Taoilinn

RunRev on Campus
Presenting LiveCode to Educators at Campus Technology event in Boston.

Earlier this week, Kevin Miller, RunRev CEO, flew to Boston to join Judy Perry, California State University, Fullerton Lecturer and LiveCode in Education evangelist, to speak with 3rd Level educators and administrators from all over the United States at the prestigious Campus Technology event.

What is Campus Technology
In its 18th year, Campus Technology 2011 is an annual education conference for College and University Educators, Administrators and IT consultants as well as other media, library and faculty staff. “Campus Technology conferences provide attendees with the opportunity to explore the cutting-edge technologies that drive student achievement both in and out of the classroom” says their website. This year’s event explored strategic planning, instructional design, smart classrooms, digital campuses and of course learning applications and tools. The well renowned event always attracts industry leaders as well as thought-leaders, advocates and influencers in the education space. The conference opened with a Keynote from Michael Wesch, Associate Professor in Kansas State University, looking at how communication has evolved from simple speech and gestures to social media and web & mobile apps. The conference was closed with a keynote from Kenneth C. Green, founding director of The Campus Computing Project, whose presentation “The Fourth Decade of the IT Revolution” talks about the adoption of technology on campus and poses the question - what are the future IT challenges for educators and how can they be solved?

RunRev on Campus
RunRev was delighted to be able to be a part of this great event, and to provide some answers to that question of ‘What’s Next for Educators’. We showed how LiveCode is delivering real solutions for both educators and students and highlighted how important a tool like LiveCode is going to be to the future both on and off campus. The message of being able to create your own iPhone/iPad app really resonated with the educators we spoke to. So too did the core tenet of LiveCode as a programming tool so easy to learn that even non-programmers can use it.

Our presentation included this really eye catching poster, showing educators how LiveCode is easy to learn and easy to teach and encouraging them to teach their students to make mobile apps.  Educators have fond memories of Hypercard so everyone was really excited at the prospect of using an English-like programming language to teach the principles of computer science. The IT Consultants and faculty staff were drawn to our ‘compile free workflow’ and keen to take about how the New York Law School uses LiveCode to quickly develop working prototypes for their research team. LiveCode’s unique ability to engage students by letting them see changes happening in real time garnered enthusiastic responses from everyone and educators told us how great it was that they can use something fun to keep their students engaged and interested.

Two things that everyone was talking about at the conference were the current job market that students face, and of course the growth of all things mobile, in education as much as life in general. These are two of the key strengths of LiveCode for educators, and Kevin Miller and Judy Perry spent time talking to the conference attendees about how LiveCode could be used to pass on transferable skills to students of every discipline. Today’s graduates enter an extremely tough job market on leaving education and being able to show students, even non programming students, how to make mobile apps is a valuable skill that could them a much needed edge in getting that perfect first job.

LiveCode in Education Evangelist

Our success at Campus Technology would not have been possible without the help and support of long term LiveCode user, evangelist and educator, Judy Perry from California State University, Fullerton. Judy is very active in the LiveCode community, has spoken on behalf of LiveCode in Education at RunRevLive.11 conference as well as maintaining the LiveCode in Education Facebook page. Judy has used LiveCode previously to teach An Introduction to Multimedia Course to non-programming majors. More recently Judy has focused on teaching Computers in Society courses to non-programming majors. Judy says that LiveCode is perfect for a course like this. “In just a couple of weeks I can show these students how to write their own simple program, for multiple platforms, in a way that is embraceable enough for these non- majors to be happy to continue to look at using computing”. As well as teaching others to use LiveCode, Judy has made her own apps to help teach her children. She made a little bingo game to help children progress in Math - something her kid’s fourth grade teacher was really excited to see.

Judy travelled all the way from California to Boston to attend the event and to speak on our behalf. She was really great at the conference and we were so lucky to have her with us to really strengthen our message and drive interest by showing off her own LiveCode built apps and by talking as a non-programmer to other non-programmers about the benefits of LiveCode to her fellow educators.

“If we can get Educators engaged we are going to see a renaissance of teacher created learning objects, where they can share and use code, collaborate and design their own individualized curriculum solutions.” ~Judy Perry

Thanks Judy for helping us get one step closer to this renaissance.

You can learn more about LiveCode in Education from the education section of our website.
If you are interested in being a LiveCode Evangelist and attending conferences in your area on behalf of LiveCode please email Mark.Taoilinn@RunRev.com for more information.

About the Author Mark Taoilinn is Sales and Marketing Manager for RunRev Ltd.

	4.6.3: LiveCode Cloud
	July Offers Round-up
	RunRev on Campus
	LiveCode Dictionary

Tweet