Apple puts the focus on learning Coding with Scholarships & Software

Aside from all the software updates coming to your Watch, Phone, Tablet, Computer and Apple TV box – there’s something else which for Apple as a company was just as important today at WWDC – Learning Coding.

Tim Cook said today in San Francisco “we believe coding should be a required language in all schools” and they aren’t mucking about on that front.  Of the 5,000 attendees at The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) there are 350 scholarship winners, kids – coders, 120 of them aged under 18.

This is Apple’s way of ensuring they support and grow the future generations of App developers.

Critical to this push for coding as part of education was the launch of a new iPad app called “Swift Playgrounds”.

Swift Playgrounds teaches in a raw code plus live real-time environment the basics of coding, and it’s not just the basics too.  You’re learning the deepest parts of Apple’s Swift programming language through the app as far as you want to dig.

Cook announced that to aid with the push to have Coding in schools, “we’re going to make swift playgrounds free, and we hope that this gift to kids and schools around the world will help make coding a part of the school day” going on to say “because we’re combining basic coding skills with real live code, swift playgrounds can profoundly impact the way kids learn to code”

As a father of three, who sees my 9-year-old boy using websites like Scratch from MIT to learn to code – Swift is just another great tool in that arsenal – the idea of a visual drag and drop style learning will enhance coding skills from almost any age.

Here in San Francisco there are eight young Australians who were recipients of Apple Scholarships to WWDC.  Staggeringly, the youngest is just 9 years old.  NINE.  Anvitha Vijay from Melbourne has a goal to create fun and interactive apps that help people.  She’s already made an app (Smartkins Animals) which introduces kids to over 100 animals and allows them to record and practice their pronunciation.

She’s off to Disneyland after WWDC ends as a reward for her efforts from her Parents!