There’s A Class For That At MDC
In partnership with Apple, Miami Dade College’s Idea Center is offering a non-credit programming course called Swift, where students, regardless of experience, will learn how to develop apps.
The objective of the course is to teach students how to code, by using Apple’s coding language, Xcode, and the Swift programming language, for writing iOS and macOS apps.
The 14-week class is open to students for $349 and continuing education students for $599. Students will be instructed by professor Kenneth Loomis. The class is scheduled to start on Feb. 5, but students can still enroll up to a week after it starts by going to www.theideacenter.co/swift/. The class code is 18475.
“The class was designed to be very hands on without having any homework outside of class, so basically you will have mini lectures inside class at the very beginning, but then the majority of the class will be spent programming,” Loomis said. “The students will be given a kind of guiding exercise like instructions, almost a step-by-step guide, and then we’ll take [a] break and we’ll come back to talk about their progress.”
According to the Idea Center’s Executive Director Romi Bhatia, the class is for anyone,tech geek or novice.
“Swift is a class that we are going to be offering as a pilot. It is part of our partnership with Apple,” Bhatia said. “It is essentially a way to take anybody with no background in coding and teach them how to be able to code and create IOS applications, used on iPhones, iPads [and] MacBooks as well.”
According to Bhatia, MDC is one of the six community colleges across the country offering the programming course. However, Apple is planning on expanding the program to 30 community colleges across the country. The expansion is part of their Everyone Can Code campaign. The initiative was designed to introduce coding curriculum into elementary schools, high schools and colleges, so children and adults from various backgrounds can learn how to code.
“It doesn’t require any background, you just come with your interest in coding and we will teach you in a very fun and interactive way like we teach at our Idea Center classes,” Bhatia said. “I think that is what is going to [make] people interested in [programming].”
The Idea Center offers students speaker series, workshops, services and lectures with the goal of helping students become successful entrepreneurs.
“I’m very excited about it because many times people think that coding and computer languages are not for them and this really is a class that teaches you computer languages in a very fun way,” Bhatia said.
