Beginning in April, 7th and 10th grade SEP students will be learning the ins and outs of TouchDevelop, Microsoft’s visual programming language used to design mobile apps. Tenth graders will spend roughly 4 weeks learning the ropes of TouchDevelop, while 7th grade students will devote 2 weeks to the language, and then another 2 weeks learning how to design websites promoting the apps they created in TouchDevelop.

“This is a quick and easy way for students to prototype apps—for both Android and iOS,” says José Olivares, SEP’s Teacher Support Fellow, “Students can go straight from programming to deploying their apps, and have them tested without an approval process.” The upcoming curriculum was designed by Alfred Thompson, a high school computer science teacher and prolific education blogger.