Teachers

Thunkable Accounts

Apply for educational accounts with Thunkable at https://thunkable.com/solutions/education. In 2023 courses at USF, students were given Pro-like accounts for $25 per student per semester. The paid accounts allow students to create more than 10 apps and publish web apps, which is great for sharing.

Course Outlines and Materials

Professor Wolber teaches a course to University of San Francisco students, mostly beginning coders who are humanities and business students (not CS majors). View the course outline at https://usfca.instructure.com/courses/1618565

Build, Conceptualize, Customize, Create

The Thunkable book is set up as a course-in-a-book. Follow this process for each chapter:

Build: Task the students with reading a chapter, watching the accompanying video, and building the sample apps in it. The students follow step-by-step instructions and get introduced to the topic.

Conceptualize: Group students in pairs and have them work on the conceptualization questions at the end of the chapter (answers are in the appendix). There are also Google doc versions of expanded worksheets in the Canvas class. This step is vital for the students understanding code terminology and being able to “talk the talk” and proceed to the increasingly more sophisticated coding.

Customize: Assign the customization problems at the back of the chapter to students, either individually or with pair programming. The customization problems ask students to modify/extend the app they just built but without step-by-step instructions. The students must explore and figure out solutions and apply what they learned in the chapter.

Create: Assign a creative project. For some students, this is when they take off! You can restrict the assignment to different degrees— the key is to require that they demonstrate mastery of the coding concepts of the chapter.

Generative AI and OpenAI Keys

Incorporate generative AI so that students can build chatbots, debates and other gen-AI apps. [DragAndDropCode.com/createai](https://www.draganddropcode.com/createai) has tutorials which can be integrated into your curriculum. These lessons are not in the Thunkablle book.

You and your students will need an OpenAI key to access OpenAI. You can setup an account at openai.com/api. You’ll need a credit card. You can invite your students as “team members” of your account which will allow them to create a key. You can monitor their usage. Wolber taught a courses of 40+ students in the spring ‘23 and spent less than $50 for the semester.