We know that if you aren’t successful at engaging a student at the very start of the course it can be hard to get their engagement back later. LiveCode helps you to engage everyone in your class from day one – and hold their attention right through to the end of the course.

LiveCode is great at creating games. It has full support for graphics, animation and creating game logic. Games are a great opportunity to teach computational thinking. How do I solve a problem? Break it down into logical chunks and see your game come to life. Students are motivated when they are able to create impressive apps and games to share with friends and family. LiveCode apps run on any platform, including most importantly the iOS and Android devices your students have in their pockets

We regularly hear stories of schools having success in increasing their class sizes after they adopt LiveCode. It is common for schools to double the number of higher or advanced classes a year or two after adoption. We also see a reduction in the rates of students dropping out of classes. In some cases LiveCode has even helped to retain students within the school system rather than dropping out.

With English-like coding, students grasp concepts easily. The language offers simplicity, e.g, you can start counting in a loop with 1 not 0. Students don’t have too many hard concepts to grasp early on. We avoid the use of symbols, which are tough for the human brain to grasp. Coding in LiveCode is “live” – students see their programs work as they build them. If they make a mistake they can step through their code line by line and see exactly how it works. Students can spot and correct their own errors rather than having their teacher do it.

Your students will really enjoy the power and flexibility available and will be able to produce amazing apps and games. There is nothing more motivating for a student than being able to demo their app to their friends and family and others on their own phone. For example, LiveCode classes have been so successful that a small high school group recently placed second in the Congressional App Challenge – a USA-wide contest with hundreds of entrants predominantly at college/University level!

Having just the right coding language for the age group you are teaching is very important. Ages 10 to 17 have some particular challenges. Scratch is too simple for this age group and doesn’t stretch students sufficiently. Java, JavaScript and even Python are too complex and can lead to lots of students dropping out. Platforms such as App Inventor are also too complex.

An independent study from Southern Cross University compared the cognitive load of completing tasks in LiveCode to App Inventor and showed that LiveCode required around half the cognitive load.

If your students are going on to a career in software engineer, LiveCode makes an excellent stepping stone to other languages such as Python on JavaScript. One teacher experimented with just this point, switching from teaching Python first to LiveCode first. He was then able to go on to do Python next and found he could get through 5 months of Python classes in 2 months. 25% of the class would drop out when he taught Python first, when teaching LiveCode first none of the students dropped out.

LiveCode can be taught at any age. However it is specially well suited to teaching ages 10 to 17. It is a perfect step-up for students who started out with Scratch in earlier years. It is just as powerful as JavaScript or Python, but comes without the jargon, symbols or unnecessary complexity that can cause as much as a third of your class to drop out early on. It is “live” so your students see results every step of the way.