As part of the Computer Science Week, Apple India had organised an 'Everyone Can Code' session at one of its Mumbai retailers' outlet on 14 December. The session which was open to junior school kids, as well as their parents, saw participation by around 30 children from across Mumbai.
Apple has been conducting these workshops when school children generally have vacations. But an exception was made during the Computer Science Week. So far, Apple has conducted five such workshops across five cities in India with around 400 participating students.
Jalpa Seth, who teaches at Oberoi International School, guided the assembled children through the Swift Playground app which has easy to follow lessons on coding. Apple has two programmes, namely Swift — Everyone Can Code (Swift Playground) and Develop in Swift.
Swift Playgrounds has exercises and interactive puzzles to teach children aged 8 and over, not only to code but also think critically. The language used to perform tasks is the same that's used by professional iOS app developers. The participating kids performed the Swift Playground lessons on their iPads.
"Swift as a coding language can be a great way to start your coding adventure. It is designed to help students build a solid foundation in programming language, as they, continue to learn more it equips the students with skills like communication, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration that are essential in developing number of corollary areas such as math, literacy, problem-solving, furthermore geometry, data analysis, physics, statistics, etc," said Seth, who is also an Apple Distinguished Educator.
Swift Playgrounds requires no prior coding language, thereby making it ideal for students to pick up the language. In addition to the built-in library of lessons, Swift Playgrounds includes a collection of extra challenges — with new ones added over time.
Thanks to the multi-touch iPad, students could tap, drag or type in text or numbers and then run the code to see if they were getting the desired outcome in the puzzle. A lot of the students worked with their parents to solve some coding puzzles.
"Current curriculum need demands more app developers and knowing Swift will definitely give learners an unbeatable edge to it. Swift as a coding language allows the developer to see the output even before finishing the product," said Laxmi Priya, another Apple Distinguished Educator teaching at the Trio World School in Bengaluru who was helping out Seth in conducting the workshop.
Apple on 20 November unveiled a completely redesigned Everyone Can Code curriculum to help introduce more elementary and middle school students to the world of coding. The new curriculum includes even more resources for teachers, a brand new guide for students and updated Swift Coding Club materials.
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