I’m teaching Project Lead the Way with 5th graders working in groups of 2 or 3. We’re coding using the new IQ Blocks iPad app and I was wondering if there was a way for them to share code between devices. As it is right now, we can only have them code on one iPad but if that student is absent, it sets things back for that group as they either can’t continue or have to start all over again. I see an option for saving to Apple’s cloud storage but we don’t enable that for our students and I was hoping there was another way to share code between devices.
You can save IQ blocks projects on iOS to any could service supported by the Files app, including Google Drive, Dropbox, MS Onedrive, and various others. If your school uses one of those services then you could set up a shared folder accessible from all the iPads and keep everyone’s code in there.
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I see that I can upload them to Google Drive from the Google Drive app but is there a way to do it directly from the IQ Blocks app?
Yes. Google Drive should show up as a location in the file picker that appears when you save a program.
Once Google Drive is installed on the iPad, you should have the option to add it to the Locations in the Save As dialog box.
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I was able to find the option to save to Drive but when I create the file in IQ Blocks, it doesn’t actually let me save it. There’s no save button to click on. It just lets me create and name the file but to actually get out of the save menu, I have to save it to the device.
I can save it to Drive by opening the Drive app and uploading it directly after saving it to the iPad but I’m looking to eliminate those steps.
My students are complaining that their files are disappearing when they get to class each day but I have a feeling their overwriting them with blank documents by accident.
I’m also not fond of the fact that there’s no way to back out of the save menu without saving.
I’ll look into the saving on Google Drive issues.
As of iPadOS 13.1.2, you can one-finger swipe the top of the Files window in a downward direction to dismiss without saving.
FWIW, I also experienced this issue on the iPadOS 13.2 public beta.
That’s good to know but not particularly intuitive IMO - at least, I didn’t know you could do that until just now. If it’s possible for apps to add their own options to the standard file picker interface, a “cancel” option might be a nice addition.
Sadly the “Files” system on iPadOS leaves a lot to be desired as we have little to no control over it… AFAIK, the swipe to close didn’t exist in iOS12.
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Good to know. We’re still running 12.4 I think. I’ll check with the tech guys to see if they’re ok with us going to 13 yet. We usually hold off for a few weeks before updating across the board.
We are also having students say when they open their program it’s blank. Just about every class period someones program is missing and they have to start over.
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Good to know I’m not the only one. Maybe I’ll start a new thread for this specific problem. My students are on 13 and their ipads are set to auto update apps so they’re using the most current version of IQ blocks.
If you do can you link to it here. Ours are on anywhere from 12-13 with the most current version of the app as well.
I was going to create one but saw that someone already had so I just chimed in there.
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