Kids as young as five are learning the principles of coding — courtesy of Apple’s expanding Swift learning curriculum.
As part of EU Code Week, Apple is highlighting how its Swift coding language is helping improve educational outcomes for kids throughout Europe. And not just where you’d expect either.
In a press release, Apple describes the “growing number of European institutions relying on the power and versatility of iPad, Mac and Apple’s Everyone Can Code and App Development with Swift curricula to teach coding to a new generation of students.”
As one example, Apple describes how teachers Alice Nutt and Clare Scott use the lessons they learn from Swift Playgrounds. They use these insights “to incorporate coding principles into every subject they teach.” Students at Layton Primary School in Blackpool live in one of the most deprived parts of England. According to the report, there has been a “remarkable change” in students since the course began.
“Children would sit there [before] and wait for things to happen,” Clare Scott said. “But children with a coding mentality know that if they do something, something will happen. There will be an output if they put in an input — they are more resourceful in terms of being able to tackle problems.”
“We realized we’d already been using the skills of coding everywhere in the curriculum,” said Alice Nutt. “When we write, we go back and edit and improve it — we were debugging. We sequence stories, we sequence events and things that we do in our everyday lives. So it’s just making everyone at the school realize that coding really is all around you.”
Swift for kids: I’d like to teach the world to code
Swift was launched in 2014, and has rapidly become a popular coding language. To promote it (and overall coding skills) Apple launched its “Everyone Can Code” initiative. This provides a syllabus for people learning the coding language.
The program has expanded into numerous schools around the world. According to Apple, more than 5,000 educational establishments are currently using its Everyone Can Code curriculum.
This summer, Apple staged a series of Teacher Coding Academy courses to show teachers how coding could be incorporated into their classrooms.
Source: Apple
