Apple To Teach Teachers To Teach Coding For Free 96
theodp writes: From the Home Office in Cupertino: "Apple today announced a new set of tools to help educators teach coding to students from grade school to college. In addition to significant enhancements to the Develop in Swift and Everyone Can Code curricula, Apple is also 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. In addition, with many institutions operating remotely, Apple is adding resources for educators and parents to help ensure they have the tools they need to help students learn and grow from anywhere. [...] 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, a comprehensive program and curriculum to help students of all abilities, from kindergarten to college, learn coding to solve problems and prepare them for the workforce. 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."
Back in 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed that most students shunned programming before Apple introduced Swift "because coding languages were 'too geeky.'" As Apple introduced Swift in 2016, Cook called for requiring all children to start coding in 4th grade (9-10 years old), which Cook reiterated to President Trump in a 2017 White House meeting with tech titans.
Back in 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed that most students shunned programming before Apple introduced Swift "because coding languages were 'too geeky.'" As Apple introduced Swift in 2016, Cook called for requiring all children to start coding in 4th grade (9-10 years old), which Cook reiterated to President Trump in a 2017 White House meeting with tech titans.
"For free" (Score:3)
*corporate cost recovery during future salary negotiation in a flooded market noticing prohibited
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Contrasting to Apple "free" bullshit [biblegateway.com]
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*corporate cost recovery during future salary negotiation in a flooded market noticing prohibited
For a company who has the balls to charge $700 for a set of fucking wheels for a server chassis, you over-analyzed this.
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Their goal worked: you are still talking about them [youtube.com].
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HR doesn't have to deal with autistic people, or races they don't like. An excess of candidates makes it easier to exclude whatever kind of person you want. The benefits go beyond cost.
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Not to mention they can get rid of other problematic employees, like the ones who don't want to work on automated weapons. If only 5% of engineers are sociopaths, you need a whole lot of them to assemble a sociopath skunkworks.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is no coincidence they are using Swift
First there was C. Then there was C++. Then there was C = C! + 1.
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"a programming language to empower everyone to turn their ideas into apps on any platform"
I don't see any windows binaries on the download page. ;(
https://swift.org/download/#re... [swift.org]
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No Android or Chrome OS either. The latter is particularly notable given the way chrome is totally dominating k-12 education, and the former is notable given its relative ubiquity. It's also pretty rare to find a school where they're using macs, and especially ipads, so swift barely even has any relevance there to begin with.
If they really wanted to be altruistic, they would teach python. Python is pretty much the swiss army knife of programming languages, and is probably the one programming language that i
Re: Get them when they are young (Score:1)
Re:Get them when they are young (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm.. so what? Coding is a useful skill. The fact that someone is acting out of self interest isn't good enough reason for not accepting the product or service. Most of the things you purchase are created because of people acting out of self interest. Do you work for no profit/free?
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I admit I'm working for money, and don't characterize it as an altruistic service to underserved PC assembly line workers.
My for-profit work is for profit, and my charitable work is for charity. I don't claim "extra credit" intended to boost my stock price for the latter.
If you object to "privatize profits, socialize costs", the objection to this kind of empty virtue signaling has to start somewhere. If Apple is concerned about the future of society in general, aiding health care education would be far mo
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Umm.. so what? Coding is a useful skill. The fact that someone is acting out of self interest isn't good enough reason for not accepting the product or service. Most of the things you purchase are created because of people acting out of self interest. Do you work for no profit/free?
Yes. Brain surgery is also an useful skill. Do we try to tech it to everybody? No. Why? Because almost all people will never be any good at it. Same with coding.
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Those are the programmers that end up working for apple.
Or Microsoft. Or writing apps.
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It's OK if they are acting from enlightened self interest, but if they're corrupting the education to crank out people who need their specific platform to use what they learned, not so much.
There are plenty of languages that run on just about anything that they could use.
When I was in school, the biggest roadblock was having 6 computers for over 1000 students. Any student that got a chance to try managed OK without a very special "non-geeky" language. With Raspberry Pi's and cheap laptops and tablets out t
Well-rounded learning; its own reward & practi (Score:2)
Coding is a useful skill, one which can be picked up while also learning a far more practical language than Swift (such as the other languages the grandparent poster mentioned—Scheme, Python, Ruby, C, or some other language). Learning proprietor-specific stuff to gear your knowledge around what only a proprietor offers is not going to get you the well-rounded "coding" skill you approvingly referred to and such focus isn't likely to help you make money either. Most programming jobs won't revolve around
So? (Score:2)
The thing about teaching swift is that it's time the world moved on from C++ to languages that have more of a clean sheet. Rust would be fine. Swift of course has it's legacy in Objective-C but it was enough of a clean-sheet to "do it right this time". A decade ago or more one would have said Java was the right "next generation" language. Maybe there's some other candidates out there, I don't know about (Go?). But Swift is acceptable.
But we can't just keep on teaching untyped languages like Python. He
Yea um about moving on... (Score:2)
I don't think it's necessary to train all kids in programming extensively, because most people will never use such knowledge.
Making sure they know the basics of using a word processor, a spreadsheet and a slideshow program would be a better bet IMO.
It's something that low-end jobs like to see and LibreOffice/OpenOffice
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Twenty years from now most real codebases will still be written in C and C++, the former looking much like it does today and the latter almost unrecognizable. Swift, Go and Rust will be remembered fondly, like Pascal.
Re: Get them when they are young (Score:2)
"Instead of Python."
There are several generations of programmers in this audience, and I'm familiar with the theory that learning language X first might somehow be detrimental but I don't believe it. However, the chance of having Python as a first language being especially beneficial is smaller than a gnat's dick. So learn it second, third, Nth, never, why should we care. Nobody's first language should be their last.
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I agree. In fact, Python is completely unsuitable for beginners. The language is far too powerful and its mechanisms are far too complex for beginners. Sure, it is a very nice tool in the hands of an expert. But first language? No. And not either 2nd or 3rd language.
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Since when it python too complex for anything? It's designed so that anybody can pick it up quickly, and you can code in it interactively (i.e. scripting) so you can easily learn it one command at a time. Most people tend to start out with languages like that where you can jump right in to doing things that are actually useful (read: beyond being a very complicated calculator) without having to learn about data types, classes, etc. Compiled languages like swift require you to understand all of that before y
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"I'm from Microsoft, and I'm here to help."
When you hear it, you better pray they've only sent Clippy.
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There is an equipment manufacturer in Iowa that was having a hard time recruiting people to work on the floor of their factory, especially skilled trades like welders. They did some short term stuff like open a training center that offered free classes. They also started inviting local schools to bring kids i
CEO w vested interest wants to force kids' studies (Score:2)
Fuck you, sir.
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In Baltimore there are 13 high schools, in 2017 not a single student in 13 Baltimore high schools [educationviews.org] - not one - was performing at grade level in math. Why isn't that a priority? How will the kids from Baltimore ever secure employment if they cant pass math class?
Note: Think this situation in the Baltimore High Schools through - each one of those high schools each had a valedictorian, but that valedictorian couldn't do 12th grade math at a level of "Proficient". Imagine their surprise when they go to college a
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Typo:
In Baltimore there are 13 high schools,
There are more than 13 high schools in Baltimore, I was discussing 13 particular high schools in the city of Baltimore, there are others where they had at least one student that tested grade-level proficient in math.
Sorry for the confusion, I caught the error as soon as I hit submit.
Re: CEO w vested interest wants to force kids' stu (Score:2)
For kids to be interested in math, they need to see a need - The possibility of actually getting a well paying job in private industry might be the impetus for some kids to take interest.
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I doubt most people here could pass 12th grade math
Why would you doubt something like that? Is there something special about "12th grade math" (which I assume is something like our regular high school math)?
Re: CEO w vested interest wants to force kids' stu (Score:2)
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Hm (Score:2)
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No cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is also starting a new professional learning course for Develop in Swift, available to educators at no cost.
Except for the Apple tax, of course:
If they were really interested in teaching educators to teach coding, they would make their new toy cross-platform. Nice slashvertisement, though.
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Not even that. I'd settle for a free-as-in-beer VM I could download and learn basic iOS development with. Just like you can with Android. Same for OS X (or whatever it is called now) app development.
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Apple is also starting a new professional learning course for Develop in Swift, available to educators at no cost.
Except for the Apple tax, of course:
If they were really interested in teaching educators to teach coding, they would make their new toy cross-platform. Nice slashvertisement, though.
How is buying the platform you'd be using Swift to develop for considered a tax? Why else would you use Swift? You buy a copy of Windows to develop Windows software.
You even pay the Linux tax of learning Linux administration to develop software for Linux, and if you think that's free then knock yourself out because Swift is open source.
https://swift.org/builds/swift... [swift.org]
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How is buying the platform you'd be using Swift to develop for considered a tax? Why else would you use Swift? You buy a copy of Windows to develop Windows software.
You even pay the Linux tax of learning Linux administration to develop software for Linux, and if you think that's free then knock yourself out because Swift is open source.
Currently the most popular operating system used in k-12 (with a 65% share of that market) costs the schools nothing at all to use, which is Chrome OS. And no, you don't pay for it with advertising or surrendering your privacy or anything at all like that, so nip that thought in the bud. Literally, all you pay for is the hardware, the vendor that makes the hardware doesn't even hand so much as a penny to google (the school can optionally pay Google for the cloud services, apps, management features, etc, tho
Re: No cost? (Score:2)
"Literally, all you pay for is the hardware"
I do not understand your argument, Mac, PC, iPad, Chromebook, Android are all in the same boat on this. If you want to develop software, you need to buy... rent... use... a system configured for that, someone pays for it.
And what do you mean IF your school has a platform that runs Swift? This article is about free Swift classes. If you did not have Macs in your school or plan on buying them, why would you take the free Swift class? Or iPads if we're talking ab
Can apple be more sickening and disgusting (Score:1)
good gawd (Score:2)
Can we drop the school coding thing its not the 1980's our computers don't boot to basic and no other profession is forced curriculum at fuckin grade school. If you want to tech grade schoolers a profession teach them how to dig a ditch... most of them will be doing it for a living anyway, and the one's that don't will appreciate why they don't.
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The single most important skill for most students is the concept of compound interest, especially as it relates to credit cards as well as auto and student loans. It amazes me how few college students understand the reality of paying off their "low/no-money down" 4 year education ten years after they graduate - it will prevent them from starting their adult life able to move out of their parents house for many graduates, as they make $1,000/month payments towards their BA degree for their first decade after
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Go back to the 80's and teach proper typing skills.
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A coding class is about as useful as a class on design of experiments. Do we teach that at all except in passing in science classes? Even for undergraduates?
For free (Score:4)
Apple (To Teach [...] For Free)
Apple To Teach Teachers (To Teach Coding For Free)
Apple To Teach Teachers To Teach (Coding For Free)
I'm afraid they want students to code for free, last option.
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Re:For free (Score:5, Informative)
Teaching Professionals (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Translation, the book and companion software is geared for children as young as 4th grade, and may even be suitable for helping the 50 year-old former 3rd grade teacher learn to program enough to "inspire" the kids to program.
I don't understand the irrational compulsion to cram programming down the throats of our elementary school age children - why not cram math, science, literature, history, or even, dare I say it, physical education? What would really be nice would be if we could find a way to teach high school students about complex topics like "compound interest" as they prepare to take on a quarter-million dollar debt studying at a top university, only to earn a degree in Women's Studies or French Literature.
One thing we know for sure, "White Fragility" [thehill.com] will be on the curriculum, likely displacing things like "To Kill a Mockingbird" to make room for them in an already overcrowded syllabus.
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I doubt you have any science education, and if you do I doubt you understood it.
teach teachers to code - what happens next? (Score:2)
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That or you just need to know enough for your particular job role. For my job I've used python, java, sql, c#, and powershell, all mainly for one thing: analysis. In other words, the programming languages are a tool for me, and my project deliverables don't ever include software (except I provide the source code as documentation to show what I did, how I reached my conclusions, etc, but as far as I know nobody has ever run one of my scripts, compiled bytecode/CLR, or even read my source code for that matter
Teaching to code? Or teaching to think? (Score:3)
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We spent most of the time learning how to frame the problem and solve it; only then did we write any code to do the computation.
If you used punch cards and had someone else keying them in for you (only one keypunch), this was the way it was done. But yes, defining the problem space made the most sense, now where's my flowchart template.
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Worry (Score:3)
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That's exactly what they want. There's one group of executives who think software developers are fully fungible, you can move them between tasks with no loss of productivity, and you can hire and fire them as necessary; there's another group who are aware this isn't the case but want to make this the case in the future. All this push for teaching coding in schools is their attempt to increase availability of software developers, drive down wages, and make it easy to hire and fire developers on a whim. Do
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They're failing, at least here in The Netherlands. Last year around August, they contracted a local university to teach their curriculum and a friend of mine was interested.
It didn't start because in a country of 17 million inhabitants, 5 students wanted to start with the Apple iOS development course. But surely, I should contact them in January! Nope, once again a no-go.
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The Need (Score:2)
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Same story here, parents wouldn’t buy me a video game console, so I learned to make my own. The other issue is that it’s much harder to create something that looks modern now than back when everybody played with with barely enough RAM to run an OS. Games in the early 90s might have had a few thousand man hours, games in the 2020s have over a million man hours. Even if you coded from crib to death, you couldn’t make from scratch on your own.
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Same story here, parents wouldn’t buy me a video game console, so I learned to make my own.
How well did it run Mortal Kombat?
Teach teachers to teach... (Score:2)
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can't teach (Score:1)
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From the people who brought you "our app is special and bypasses camera security", "we don't bother to check document/domain origins", "of course you can load javascript from file:// URLs", "obviously, we'll let you auto-download an arbitrary URL to the disk so you can use it in a file:// URL" and "you want us to let you use secure-only features from a local disk file?":
https://www.ryanpickren.com/we... [ryanpickren.com]
And that's what one guy found in just a few hours.
When apple offers something for "free" (Score:1)
Monkey training (Score:2)
"it's a trap"! (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a primary school headmaster and I have the local Apple rep visit me about once a year, trying to lure me in.
Their tools are very good, no doubt, but IMHO there are two major flaws, reason why I'm against adopting it in favour of other more open platforms.
First: they teach Swift, a non standard language* that exists only in the Apple ecosystem. Not very good from and educational point of view.
Second: it's implementation at school requires Apple hardware everywhere, from tablets to IWBs. Although available through very advantageous leasing contracts, is still has a higher TCO.
*the language itself is open, but I don't know of non-Apple implementations
Re: "it's a trap"! (Score:2)
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Have them learn and teach logo. It's basically useless outside of the classroom.
Wrong tactic (Score:2)
Try, try again (Score:3)
I learned to code in middle school, on an actual ASR 33 teletype back in the 70's, mainly teaching myself from books because the teachers didn't get it. By the time I was in high school I was training teachers on how to use computers and we never got to teaching them coding (BASIC, baby, the language of the future!). My kids are in high school now and when I went to the orientation, the vice principal in charge of online registration, who looks to be in his thirties maybe, told us that he "wasn't good with computers" and couldn't get everything to work.
Back when I was in high school, I thought the teachers didn't get it because they'd never been exposed. No one has that excuse any more. It's truly lack of aptitude and interest. If you think you are going to get an assortment of humanities majors to learn how to problem solve and teach coding to students you have another thing coming.
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Yeah, I agree about "lack of aptitude and interest." I'm a professional developer. I started learning to program in the 70s, as well, even before my family owned a computer. I'd go to neighbors that had computers and ask if I could use them.
I have low expectations for broad classroom approaches like this. The best you can hope for is that the exposure will spark some interest from a few students. I doubt that most will get much out of it.
I was talking to my brother-in-law about this the other day. We both h
Yeah (Score:1)
Now we will have an already oversaturated market of bad coders being flooded with more bad coders.
I doubt writing GOOD AND SECURE code is part of the curriculum.
When we have an oversaturated market of "McCoders", we can expect more and more security problems in the future.
Schools should be concentrating on the "3 Rs" and programming should be an optional class for gifted students, who need to write secure code in order to pass. Trying to bring down coding to the LCD is just going to produce a bunch
Expert? (Score:2)
So Apple is now an expert in how to have a Myocardial Infarction?
Is it really necessary for anyone to "teach" someone else the proper method for having a "Heart Attack"?
Shiver me timbers!
Apple: Pay your damn taxes first (Score:2)
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In a couple of days Apple is facing a major tax decision in an EU court.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurozoneâ(TM)s finance ministers, has accused Apple of âoe[failing] to graspâ the public outcry concerning tax avoidance by multinational corporations.
He was referring to last weekâ(TM)s landmark decision, which handed Apple an enormous tax bill of 13 billion euros ($14.52 billion), based on its supposed underpayment of taxes in the Republic of Ireland. Apple paid a reported 0.005 percent tax on its European profits in 2014.
Apple does an equally "efficient" job screwing the public everywhere else it does business, including the US. Given that, the amount of money they spend on "free education" is far less then the 0.005% taxes they payed in the EU. Ironically they can take the cost associated with their "free" program off their taxes. That is truly insulting.
Make them pay their damned taxes. Corporations get a free ride on taxes all over the world. Effectively they are stealing from everyone. It's got to stop.
What? Value Added Taxes and Income Taxes aren't producing revenue from trans-national companies?
A national retail sales tax cures this problem, both for the EU and the USA.
Use Apple products, feed the beast (Score:2)
The biggest and most happy-faced tech companies tend to be the most evil companies on the planet, and Apple has become just about the worst, yet they will continue to step down to deeper depths as long as the public keeps going all googly-eyed over every new shiny object they pump out. Every new Mac and every new iPhone or iWatch people buy just re-enforces this behavior and encouraged Tim Cook and his board to become more evil.
Why is this "teach everyone to code" happy talk "evil"? Here's why:
The tech gian
But DO all kids need to learn coding? (Score:2)
What about proper ENGLISH writing? (Score:1)
Or, Training teachers for free; training them to teach coding?
I know! I know! It makes the most sense that poster theodp meant that teachers are getting free education.
I wonder if my point here is hitting home anywhere?