Apple's Swift curriculum coming to over 30 community colleges, select high schools

Apple on Friday said that over 30 U.S. community college systems will offer its "App Development with Swift" curriculum during the 2017-2018 school year, expanding on the original six the company announced in May.

A few of the new partners include the Austin Community College District, Northeast Mississippi Community College, and Northwest Kansas Technical College. A previously-announced one, the Alabama Community College System, will be adding more campuses.

"We've seen firsthand how Apple's app ecosystem has transformed the global economy, creating entire new industries and supporting millions of jobs," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We believe passionately that same opportunity should be extended to everyone, and community colleges have a powerful reach into communities where education becomes the great equalizer."

Originally launched on the iBooks Store, the curriculum is meant to guide people without any programming experience towards the goal of building a fully-functional app. While open-source, Swift is an Apple-designed language useful mainly for the company's own platforms.

The company is also deploying the curriculum in "select" high schools this fall, but it has yet to mention any districts or individual schools by name.

People wanting to try App Development with Swift on their own can do so for free, as long as they have a Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

11 Comments

cincytee 18 Years · 420 comments

About 7 years ago

Apparently they're trying to get West Virginia on board in secondary and perhaps even elementary schools.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20170824/state-school-board-members-apple-reps-meet-behind-closed-doors

Rayz2016 8 Years · 6957 comments

cincytee said:

Apparently they're trying to get West Virginia on board in secondary and perhaps even elementary schools.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20170824/state-school-board-members-apple-reps-meet-behind-closed-doors

None of the Apple employees in the room agreed to share their names or positions, aside from a man who provided his name as Steve, but refused to spell it.

Someone working in education asked him how to spell 'Steve'?

The whole thing sounds bogus.

SpamSandwich 19 Years · 32917 comments

I like the promise of Swift, but keep hearing from some high-profile developers (one of them being the guy who created the Overcast app) that they can't commit to fully implementing it because it's still in a state of flux.

randominternetperson 8 Years · 3101 comments

Rayz2016 said:

cincytee said:

Apparently they're trying to get West Virginia on board in secondary and perhaps even elementary schools.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20170824/state-school-board-members-apple-reps-meet-behind-closed-doors

None of the Apple employees in the room agreed to share their names or positions, aside from a man who provided his name as Steve, but refused to spell it.

Someone working in education asked him how to spell 'Steve'?

The whole thing sounds bogus.

You obviously aren't a teacher. You can't assume anything about how people spell their names nowadays. (I exaggerate; "Steve" a pretty safe bet. But "Steven/Stephen" on the other hand...)

SpamSandwich said:

I like the promise of Swift, but keep hearing from some high-profile developers (one of them being the guy who created the Overcast app) that they can't commit to fully implementing it because it's still in a state of flux.

It is a little "weird" that each new iOS/XCode release introduces changes to the language that requires code updates, but I expect that it will stabilize soon (if it hasn't already). The changes they made between version 1 and 2 were fairly significant and improved the language a lot, so it's good that Apple is willing to upset the apple cart a bit to get the foundation as strong as possible.