Apple has announced that they’re bringing back their Swift Student Challenge for next year. First held in 2020, the Swift Student Challenge aims to give students around the world a chance to showcase their creativity and hone their skills for the future. The next challenge is set to start in February 2024, and will now feature a new category for 50 of the most distinguished submissions to highlight standout students.
As the challenge’s name suggests, this program will have students coding in Swift, the programming language created by Apple for building apps in Mac, iOS, Apple TV and Apple Watch. The Swift Student Challenge will basically act as a platform for students to develop and present their own unique and innovative app projects. Apple says that their research has found that 85% of students would like to learn to code, but have not yet taken the steps to do so, even though over 90% of them believe coding is an important skill to have. As such, the Swift Student Challenge will aim to support and recognise aspiring student developers.
“We know that students are eager to learn coding skills to solve challenges they care about and want to know how to get started. Apple is releasing new coding resources for students and educators, working with our community partners on dedicated Swift programming, and sharing advance notice of the Swift Student Challenge timeline for 2024.
We can’t wait to see the app playgrounds students submit next year,” – Susan Prescott, Apple Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Education & Enterprise Marketing
If you’re keen to take part but aren’t sure about coding in Swift just yet, no worry as Apple is also releasing four new Everyone Can Code projects that will provide step-by-step resources to help guide students through their Swift app development journey. These four projects include:
- Design a Simple App: Create an app prototype in Keynote and learn the fundamentals of app design, practice rapid prototyping and collect feedback—just like professional developers.
- Build with Stacks and Shapes: Code a self-portrait or a work of art using SwiftUI to learn the fundamentals of user interface design.
- Build Custom Shapes: Bring your app interface to the next level by designing a shape, learning how to plot the coordinates and coding your own custom shape via SwiftUI and the About Me sample app using Swift Playgrounds.
- Design an App Icon: Create a unique and memorable app icon that communicates an idea, on top of practicing rapid prototyping, collecti feedback and uploading your icon to the Swift Playgrounds.
You can find all of their resources for teaching coding and app development using Swift, including the four new Everyone Can Code projects above, over at the Apple Education Community.
If you’re interested in the Swift Student Challenge meanwhile, you can sign up now over at developer.apple.com and be notified when the challenge is open in February 2024. Students will be given a three week window to submit their app playgrounds for the Swift Student Challenge. There will be 350 overall winners in total, and 50 of them will be ‘Distinguished Winners’ who will be invited to the Apple headquarters in Cupertino to connect with not just each other but the Apple team too. All winners meanwhile will also receive a one-year membership into the Apple Developer Programme, which will allow them to submit apps to the App Store and get support from Apple.
