Apple on Thursday launched a new set of tools to help educators teach coding to students from grade school to college, along with starting a new professional learning course for Develop in Swift, available to educators at no cost.
The course is designed to supplement the need for computer science educators in the US and helps instructors of all skill levels build foundational knowledge to teach app development with Swift.
"Apple has worked alongside educators for 40 years, and we're especially proud to see how to Develop in Swift and Everyone Can Code have been instrumental in helping teachers and students make an impact in their communities," said Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Markets, Apps, and Services.
"We are thrilled to be adding a new professional learning course to help more educators, regardless of their experience, have the opportunity to learn coding and teach the next generation of developers and designers," she said in a statement.
Apple said it is enhancing its ‘Develop in Swift' and ‘Everyone Can Code' coding curricula. ‘Develop in Swift' is geared toward high school and higher education students, and teaches both Swift, an intuitive open-source programming language, and ‘Xcode' on Mac to new and experienced coders.
‘Everyone Can Code' introduces coding to students in grades 4 through 8, and uses puzzles and games to help teach the building blocks of Swift through the Swift Playgrounds app.
The Develop in Swift curriculum is now completely redesigned to meet student learning styles, based on educator input continuously sourced by Apple. Apple also released the next set of books in its Everyone Can Code curriculum.
"Everyone Can Code Adventures" is designed for students who have already completed "Everyone Can Code Puzzles" and offers more advanced opportunities to build with Swift code.
Students will learn about important programming concepts used in app development as they work through more challenging lessons in Swift Playgrounds. To support parents with kids learning to code at home, Apple is adding a new guide to its set of remote learning resources. "A Quick Start to Code" is now available and features 10 coding challenges designed for learners ages 10 and up, on iPad or Mac. In 2016, Apple launched ‘Everyone Can Code'.
‘Develop in Swift' was released in 2019, and today more than 9,000 K-12 and higher education institutions worldwide are using the Everyone Can Code and Develop in Swift curricula from Apple, said the company.
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