Teaching with LiveCode: UK Case Study
Steven Whyte is a technology teacher at Gracemount High School in Edinburgh. He’s been teaching a course using LiveCode to his Standard Grade students (ages 13 -15). His LiveCode course fulfils all requirements needed to teach programming to exam level. Students responded so well to LiveCode that for the first time ever Steven has two full classes progressing to computer at higher level. He has written an intermediate and higher level course in LiveCode as well and starts teaching these courses this year.
Steven has very generously shared his course notes – they are available to download free to all teachers who may be interested in teaching LiveCode to their students.
We asked Steven how he got into LiveCode, what he likes about it and how the students have responded.
How did you get started using LiveCode?
“I felt that we were in dire need of a new programming environment to teach our computing students. During the five years that I have been at Gracemount, we have continued to use Comal, a procedural language developed in the 1970’s.”
”Programming is much different now and we would be putting our students at a major disadvantage by teaching them an out of date language.”
In Gracemount, Steven went on to explain, Comal/Basic has been used for many years. When HyperCard became available, teaching was switched to this easier to understand and use language, but sadly Apple dropped support for it, so teaching of Comal was resumed. Steven explained that this is not a very satisfactory solution to teach programming: it is unreliable and crashes often, leading to disengagement among the students.
“This was when I heard about LiveCode and that it was inspired by the HyperCard language. HyperCard was extremely popular in education before its demise. I started to create some programs in LiveCode and before I knew it I had managed to develop a Standard Grade Course which I have successfully taught to my fourth year classes.”
What Steven found is that LiveCode is quick to learn and easy to use. As a high level programming language LiveCode uses an English-like syntax that is comfortable to work with and easy to follow. There’s no jargon in LiveCode and no complicated syntax and structures for students to learn.
How have the students responded to LiveCode?
“They love it. They have found LiveCode easy to use and enjoy developing their own interfaces for the programs they have created.”
Steven has developed a course for Junior students and the high school and will have one for his senior students shortly. This imaginative course succeeds where others have failed: it leverages the students’ love of all things technological to engage, excite and involve students in their own learning. Students are shown how to build programs that are of interest to them and are encouraged to go farther and come up with ideas of their own.
“It is worthwhile to note that we have a large number of students going on to take Higher (senior course) this year. I felt that some got put off with programming in previous years because we used Comal. However, this year there seem to be more wanting to take it, as a result of using LiveCode.”
And how have you found LiveCode?
“I must admit that my stress levels have come down significantly whilst using LiveCode because it is so easy to spot mistakes!”
“Students make mistakes in their program which cause it not to run; some they manage to spot, others they don’t. If they need my help, I normally spot the mistake pretty quickly and more importantly, the students quickly realize why the mistake they have made is stopping their program from working correctly.”
With LiveCode students use the language they already know to write software. Instead of having to spend valuable teaching time explaining a soup of arcane symbols or the esoteric and formulaic shorthand that plague traditional programming languages, Steven was able to teach simple expressive statements. Pupils can write just a little code and start to see the results – as well as test – right away. Everything you and your whole class work on is always live, always running and you don't need to wait to see the results. Teach simple, memorable syntax and kids can start expressing their ideas right away.
What’s next for Gracemount and LiveCode?
“I would love to teach iOS. I want to look at deploying the simple programs that students create to their phones.”
“Our education system is going through a massive overhaul in the next couple of years and focus will be on game making and app creation. LiveCode already has these features built in so there is massive potential here. “
Steven Whyte has agreed to share his complete Standard Grade course notes with other educators free of charge. Below are links to the course notes and to the completed LiveCode files that you will need.
Download Standard Grade Course Notes
Download Intermediate Grade Course Notes
Download Higher Grade Course Notes
Steven Whyte, pictured left, is a technology teacher with Gracemount High School, Edinburgh. He has spoken about LiveCode at events such as the Apple Regional Training Centre and is an advocate for LiveCode in Education in Scotland.
RunRev would like to thank Steven for all of his hard work on our behalf and for generously sharing his course notes with other educators.