Roger Fingas
Geared with its new Apple Pencil-compatible budget iPad in mind, Apple has announced "Everyone Can Create," a free curriculum available to teachers looking to build artistic endeavors into their classes.
The program includes various resources and guides, with the aim of helping teachers integrate elements like music, drawing, photography, and filmmaking. These cover a range of subjects — such as math, history, and science — with the idea of getting students to use an iPad in creative ways to learn about topics like fractals.
Developed in collaboration with educators and creative professionals, Everyone Can Create includes teacher and student guides, lessons, ideas and examples to help teachers bring creativity and new communication skills into their existing subjects like English, math, science and history. For example, students can use the built-in camera in iPad to learn about fractals or they can use Apple Pencil and apps like Tayasui Sketches to learn about symmetry.
The curriculum is similar in concept to Everyone Can Code, Apple's effort to spread Swift programming in schools worldwide. Everyone Can Create will be taught to teachers through Today at Apple sessions held in the company's retail stores.
"Creativity sparks a deeper level of engagement in students, and we're excited to help teachers bring out that creativity in the classroom," said Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller. "When you combine the power of iPad, the creativity of Apple Pencil, over a million iPad apps in the App Store, the rich curriculum in Everyone Can Code and Everyone Can Create, and unique Classroom and Schoolwork apps that support students and help schools manage technology in the classroom, we believe we can amplify learning and creativity in a way that only Apple can."
Beginning later this spring, Apple Stores will begin teaching Everyone Can Create as part of their regular Today at Apple sessions for educators.
The new iPad, already on sale, is little changed from its predecessor, its other selling points being a faster A10 processor and a $299 pricetag for schools. Regular shoppers must pay at least $329.
Other classroom-oriented updates on Tuesday included new software for schools, such as a planned iWork update for iOS with Apple Pencil support and the ability to build digital books in Pages.
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1 Comment
I hope this works. A few years back I tried to organize an after school seminar at my daughter's elementary school for teachers in order to show them how they can easily create educational content using iMovie and Keynote. Out of fifty teachers, not one was interested. This was because their plates were already extremely full and the notion of having to give up even more free time for work was a non-starter.
Having spent years as a public school teacher myself – before switching to media creation full-time – I know very well how overworked teachers are, including giving up a couple of hours every evening for schoolwork. Even so, the videos and presentations that I'd put together with my students was both fun and motivating (a key reason being that when students – especially mediocre achievers – are asked to mentor others, they tend to apply themselves to master the content). For me it worked wonderfully. But then I was not like the other teachers. Getting them to become as enthusiastic as I was required much more effort than I was willing to make.
Again, I hope the Apple thing works, but I wouldn't hold my breath.