Apple once again offers product training to US teachers

Apple has opened the second session of its Apple Learning Coach learning program in which it shows educators how to make best possible use of the Apple products deployed in US classrooms.

Free, professional, learning

The free program is available to instructional coaches, digital learning specialists, and other coaching educators across the US, and is now accepting applications through November 16, 2022.

The idea is that by providing a melange of both self-paced lessons and virtual workshop sessions with Apple Professional Learning Specialists, educators come away from the experience with a coaching portfolio, a cohort of peers, and the opportunity to apply for continuing education credits from Lamar University.

There are now more than 1,600 Apple Learning Coaches in the US.

What Apple said

“For more than four decades, Apple has worked alongside educators to help enable students to create, problem-solve, and express themselves in new ways. We designed Apple Learning Coach to support educators using technology in the classroom,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Education and Enterprise Marketing.

“Apple Learning Coach is already making a real impact with educators and their students, helping to build a strong foundation for lifelong creativity and learning.”

Apple’s Tim Cook joined a White House advisory body that advised investment in online learning during the pandemic.

What teachers say (according to Apple)

Announcing the sessions an Apple press release cited Heidi Westrop, Wasatch County School District’s instructional coach and a certified Apple Learning Coach based in Utah.

She says, “Technology helps students develop creativity and critical thinking, which are highly necessary for future career opportunities.”

[Also read: McGraw Hill wants to make education sticky like social media]

“It’s my job to empower teachers in our district to spark the unique creativity in all students. Apple Learning Coach gave me the tools and resources to work with teachers with different levels of technology experience to design, deliver, and reflect on engaging learning experiences that can expand the classroom walls and celebrate every child’s unique talents.”

What else Apple offers teachers

The Apple Education Community is a pro learning hub for pedagogues in which you’ll find valuable content from educators around the world. It offers a mix of peer insight along with self-paced professional learning and the Forum, a collaborative space where educators can connect and share with one another.

Within the Apple Education Community, Apple also recently released Everyone Can Create Projects, a new online series of simple, timesaving tutorials and downloadable resources to inspire new ideas and bring creativity to any subject.

New Everyone Can Create Projects include:

Design with Shapes in Keynote to help students visualize anything they can imagine, from math concepts to works of art.

Animate with Stop Motion using Photos and Keynote to tell compelling stories with everyday objects.

Create Editing Effects with iMovie.

Write Your First Song using GarageBand.

Apple also recently updated Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Swift Playgrounds with an eye on collaboration. It means uses can view recent activity in collaborative files and get notifications when people join, comment, and make edits.

All three apps now enable users to automatically remove the background of images, and users can remove or replace the background of live video objects in Keynote.

Swift Playgrounds now helps users learn the fundamentals of machine learning by training a model with a simple rock, paper, scissors game, demonstrating how computers make predictions from data. Additional walkthroughs show how to arrange app layouts by building a journal app.

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