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Ready, Set, Dub-Dub

WWDC is an exciting time, even if this is your first year of a 3rd-5th grade coding club and completing your first app is still a few miles down the road. The breakout sessions, labs, and work groups might be beyond what we’re doing right now, but there will still be a lot of fun news and cool demos when the first virtual version of the conference kicks off.
To get into the Dub-Dub spirit, here’s a fun activity from one of my favorite tech+education gurus, the Tech Rabbi. (He’s also the author of Educated by Design, one of the books used by our Futures Lab for their Design Thinking class.)

He uses Adobe Spark Post in this tutorial, but there’s a link in the video notes to use KeyNote (or, I guess, Slides would also work.)

To get started, you’re going to screenshot the Memoji you create in the iOS Message app. You’re looking for the version with the MacBook. You can use a white background, but if you want to superimpose it over the group shot at the WWDD site, you’ll want to switch your iOS devise over to night mode.

Find the MacBook image, 3D-press to get a bigger view, and use Dark mode for a background that matches the WWDC banner

After that, it’s just a matter of collecting some images to use as laptop stickers (his recommendation of Clean PNG helps a lot, because you don’t have to worry about backgrounds) and then shrinking them down and placing them on the MacBook. You can then screenshot your image to use wherever you need a profile pic.

Collect your sticker images, size them down, and cover your lid with them. Hint: if you put them along the sides, a slight rotation outward looks more realistic.

And if you used a black background, then you can make a group photo by taking a screenshot of the image over at the WWDC Ready, Set, Code page.

I can’t talk about WWDC without reminding everyone that this year Apple has added a Student Swift Project Challenge. Hopefully a lot of the kids in the Futures Lab will get to submit something.

And, speaking of summer student opportunities, another reminder that the Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program is going virtual this year. Open to all 9th-11th graders, this two-week program teaches girls the computer science skills they need to make an impact in their community while preparing for a career in tech. Participants will get exposure to tech jobs, and join a supportive sisterhood of girls in tech.