Computer Science Education Week - an initiative to encourage K-12 students to learn about computer science - is December 7-13, 2015. As a speech-language pathologist who learned how to code iOS apps, I fully support the initiative. I think there are very fun and rewarding opportunities in the world of computer programming. And even if students have no desire to become computer programmers, they can still learn lifelong skills including creativity, logic, and problem solving through coding. For the past two years, my students (middle school and high school ages) and I participated in the hour of code as part of CSED Week. We did the Angry Birds puzzles (ages 4+) that involve dragging-and-dropping "blocks of code" via a visual programming language in order for the red bird to capture the [...]

Today marked the first day of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, CA. As always, there was great speculation about what major announcements Apple would make today. While some of the long desired items, such as the iWatch or iTV, were not announced, some exciting updates to Apple’s OS X and iOS software were revealed. Here is a look at our favorite highlights, as well as a more comprehensive list of the changes coming soon. For Mac users, there are some really exciting new features coming to our computers in the fall with OS X Yosemite. Our favorite is the capability to answer and make phone calls on your Mac computer. Apple demonstrated this ability at the WWDC Keynote by calling their new business partner Dr. Dre from a Mac computer. You can call a p[...]

“Honey, please set the timer to ten minutes.” Whether you know it or not, when uttering these words, you’re speaking in developer terminology. A developer is a person who creates software such as apps. A developer writes code, which is a series of commands - otherwise known as instructions - for a computer to execute. Why would you even care about knowing this terminology? Software is all around us, in our personal and professional lives. As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, new developments impact us whether we embrace them or not. As adults, we can choose to keep pace with these changes or do our best to ignore them. But, for the children we serve in our practice, there is an increasingly accepted feeling that learning about technology is a necessity, not a choice, if t[...]

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here's a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate how to post to Twitter from an iOS app. If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here’s a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate how to animate an image in an iOS app: If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here's a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate an iOS app with a mood ring using a picker: If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here's a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate an iOS app that displays information in a table via a dictionary: If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here's a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate a student roster in an iOS app: If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.

Eric Sailers, speech-language pathologist and owner of Expressive Solutions, has been learning iOS programming. He took the initiative because he wanted to collaborate more effectively with iOS developers on apps by Expressive Solutions. Plus, he has hopes of developing iOS apps for Expressive Solutions at some point in the future. He started creating videos to demonstrate various iOS programming skills. He believes if he can teach the skills he can demonstrate his understanding of the skills. Here's a video (best viewed at 720p in full-screen mode) of Eric using Xcode (Mac app) to demonstrate a simulated on/off light switch in an iOS app: If you can't see the video, click here to go to YouTube.