Hour of Code: Swift Playground helping kids crack the code to a digital future

WITH a push for all kids to learn coding, schools are turning to easier ways to teach the digital dialogue. A global program is offering free courses for everyone.

Students from St Hilda's School in Southport including Elysse Tapper, 10, (front) are using Swift Playground to learn to code. Picture: Adam Head

THERE are many arguments for children to learn how to code but Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi sums it up as well as any: “Coding is just like any language, the earlier you’re exposed the more successful you’ll be”.

The benefits of learning how to write code from a young age will be the focus of the global program Hour of Code next month, in which tens of millions of students in more than 180 countries will take part in more than 100,000 coding events around the world.

Andrew Johnson, CEO of the Australia Computer Society, called the evidence globally for the need for every child to learn code is “compelling”.

“The jobs of the future will require core skills in computational thinking and coding,” he said.

“These are the new foundation skills for the students of today.”

In Australia, there is a push for every school student to learn code. Every Queensland student from next year will study code as part of their compulsory studies.

An example of how schools are getting on-board is at St Hilda’s School on the Gold Coast which is launching the Coding Institute.

Elysse Tapper. 10, nine-year-old Alexi McCarthy and Sienna Hopkinson, 10, are among students at St Hilda's School in Southport learning to code through Swift Playground. Picture: Adam Head

“The Coding Institute is about more than teaching our girls how to code, it’s about teaching our girls to be critical thinkers, to be resilient, to take risks, to develop persistence, to problem solve in a systematic way just to name a few,” St Hilda’s teacher Dan Martinez said.

“Our youngest learners explore using basic command and sequences to solve problems while our older students use more advance concepts such as functions, loops, conditions to complete tasks such as creating artwork or designing and constructing simple games.”

Ask a group of St Hilda’s year 6 students and they describe coding as part of the essential skills they will need for life.

Olivia Badger said “coding powers our digital world and if we want to be part of it we must understand it”. Zarli Dickson summed it up simply: “coding is our future we need to start learning how to do it”.

This year St Hilda’s has been one of the schools to use Swift Playgrounds in teaching code, a free iPad app created by Apple designed to teach children how to code using the Swift programming language.

“Prior to the release of Swift Playgrounds, there was a huge gap between many of the ‘drag and drop’ coding activities that students are engaged in and the real life, industry recognised coding languages,” Mr Martinez said.

“So far, the Year 4 students who have been exploring Swift Playground have absolutely loved the way in which they can see the codes they create.”

There are 893 Hour of Code events in Australia from December 5 to 11. (see hourofcode.com/au). As part of Hour of Code, Apple is running free workshops in all of its stores (see apple.com/au) and also has created a guide for people wanting to run their own Hour of Code workshop with Swift Playgrounds.