Apple has today announced the global expansion of its Everyone Can Code initiative to more than 20 colleges and universities outside of the US, offering App Development with Swift Curriculum.
We're told these schools "will now offer the App Development with Swift Curriculum, a full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators to teach coding and app design to students of all levels and backgrounds."
This means that "hundreds of thousands of students from around the world gain the opportunity to become proficient in the Swift programming language and build the fundamental skills they need to pursue careers in the booming app economy."
{loadposition alex08}RMIT University, Australia’s largest higher education institution, has taken part, with Apple describing its participation as "one of the broadest international deployments of the App Development with Swift Curriculum to date."
As part of its commitment to improving digital literacy, "starting this month RMIT will offer the App Development with Swift curriculum through RMIT Online, and a new vocational course will be taught on campus. RMIT will also offer scholarships for school teachers who want to learn coding, and a free summer school course at RMIT’s City campus will give secondary students the chance to learn the basics of coding."
Of course, RMIT is just one of more than "20 international universities who are also offering the curriculum to students this year, including Mercantec in Denmark, Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Unitec Institute of Technology in New Zealand and Plymouth University in the UK."
Tim Cook, Apple CEO said: "We launched the Everyone Can Code initiative less than a year ago with the ambitious goal of offering instruction in coding to as many people as possible. Our program has been incredibly popular among US schools and colleges, and today marks an important step forward as we expand internationally.
“We are proud to work with RMIT and many other schools around the world who share our vision of empowering students with tools that can help them change the world.”
Martin Bean CBE, RMIT University vice chancellor and president said: "App Development with Swift will play a crucial role in helping RMIT’s students use their creativity and entrepreneurship to prepare for success in the 21st century workforce.
“These are the sort of skills Australians need for the jobs of the future, and we’re thrilled to work with Apple to deliver this important curriculum.”
Tenisha Fernando, fourth year RMIT student said: "I’m so excited to have the chance to begin learning with Apple’s App Development curriculum, and for the opportunities it could open for my future.
“The Swift programming language is used by developers to create some of the world’s best apps, and it would be great to join them in sharing my own ideas.”
Apple reminds us all that its App Store customers "have now downloaded more than 180 billion apps," with Apple equally impressively noting that it has "paid out over US$70 billion to developers since the store launched in 2008, making it the most vibrant software marketplace in the world."
Another related and amazing stat is that "more than 500 million unique customers from 155 countries visit the App Store every week."
So, there you go. Copiers gonna copy, haters gonna hate, but Apple knows that coders gonna code - and it is helping to spark coding's cachet with as many people worldwide as it can.
