Education moves learners, leaders, innovators, communities and everyone forward.

Before becoming an instructor at Miami Dade College in Florida, USA, Eduardo Salcedo pursued his passions for education, technology and people as a data scientist and information technology student.

In 2022, Salcedo found a new way to make an impact. He signed up for a class teaching educators how to lead coding classes. Through a collaboration between Miami Dade College, the National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3) and the Apple Community Education Initiative, this programme provides training to educators who then help turn students into professionals through training, educational programmes and certifications.

Since 2020, Miami has seen a significant boom in tech jobs, and Miami Dade College is preparing its community to fill the gaps. Miami Dade College is dedicated to helping its diverse population, many of whom are immigrants, join the local and global workforce with the skills they need to thrive. The school’s partnership with NC3 is adding individuals like Salcedo to the instructor pipeline.

Peer-to-peer learning is a cornerstone of the two-week NC3 programme. With little to no coding experience, each educator obtains the certification to train others to teach what they learn. The curriculum is built from Apple-developed education materials using the Swift coding language and makes it simple for teachers without any prior programming knowledge to learn to code, prototype an app and teach others to do the same.

“Teaching instructors is very different from teaching students,” says Salcedo. “We lead with questions like ‘How do you talk to a student who knows nothing about programming? How do you explain something to someone who’s never touched a Mac before?’ We focus on strategies and how to be successful.”

Salcedo is now a Master Instructor with NC3, facilitating in‑person trainings for faculty at other community colleges and non-profits. A remarkable 96 per cent of educators who take his class pass their certification testing.

One student who found success after attending Salcedo’s coding course offered at Miami Dade College is Luis Napoles. Just six months after he arrived in the United States from Cuba, Napoles’s app, On Watch, was featured in a programme showcase. This achievement marked a major milestone in his new life in the United States and his career ambitions. He is now a full-time, skilled IT professional working in Miami, where he effectively applies the concepts he learned in the Apple Swift course.

But the programme is about more than just new skills and passing grades. NC3 has created a community of educators across the nation.

Many participants collaborate on programme enhancements and teaching methods — and that community is rapidly expanding. Miami Dade College is part of the Global Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Equity Innovation Hub and serves as a Regional Equity Innovation Hub, an Apple-supported initiative in partnership with California State University, Northridge. These distinctions — and robust investment by Apple — empower Salcedo and Miami Dade College to act as a resource for other HSIs interested in preparing learners to succeed in the most sought-after careers in the tech economy.

“In the almost two years with NC3, I’ve met 40 to 50 instructors who are changing lives in terms of teaching students new skills that they can use in the workforce immediately,” says Salcedo.

Diagnosed as autistic at a young age, Jordyn Zimmerman was full of thoughts and ideas. But she struggled to communicate them until the age of 18, when a team of advocates supported her access to iPad and communication apps. These tools enabled her to begin to convey her knowledge, express her curiosity and advocate for her needs. Zimmerman often points out that lack of speech does not mean lack of language when she advocates for access to robust communication tools for herself and for others who are non-speaking.

Zimmerman earned her bachelor’s degree in Education Policy from Ohio University in the United States, where she worked for a more inclusive college experience for herself and others. She also completed a master’s degree in Education at Boston College and is earning a master’s degree in Business Administration.

Through her experiences in education, she recognised the inequities and injustices that existed for people with disabilities and decided to expand her advocacy to help others. She began to have conversations about systems and structures that cause inequity. Now, through policy work and partnerships, she continues to reduce barriers to access.

Her efforts led to an appointment as board chair of the national non-profit organisation CommunicationFIRST and serving on the US President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities (PCPID). There she collaborates with government agencies to identify barriers and opportunities, influence policies and promote initiatives that support inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities.

Zimmerman’s work is centred around accessibility and inclusion, which includes access to experiences and products that everyone can use and learn from. And while accessibility is a component of inclusion, alone it isn’t enough. “To foster true inclusion, you must not only have technological tools — they must be supported physically or digitally so people with disabilities can navigate their environments with dignity, respect and autonomy,” says Zimmerman.

As head of product strategy for the Nora Project, she co‑designs curricula that provide educators and learners with tools to help them work through exclusionary practices, and a framework for evaluating, researching, collaborating and addressing barriers to belonging. These resources allow learners to generate ideas, collectively define problems around access and identify innovative solutions for design and implementation.

“Educating others gets us thinking as a community and allows for more innovative problem-solving,” says Zimmerman. “In turn, this enables all people to engage fully.”

As part of the Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) community, a group of pioneering educators who are using Apple technology to transform teaching and learning, Zimmerman demonstrates thought leadership among her peers to ensure that they have access to innovative teaching and learning strategies for students with disabilities.

She has been credited with shifting how ADEs think about accessible technology in the classroom. Zimmerman is a powerful presenter and shares resources on the Apple Education Community, an online professional learning hub for educators who are using Apple technology — including curricula that integrate inclusive design principles. Her work gives other educators access to more opportunities to challenge the systems that perpetuate exclusion.

“I’m just really honoured to be in a space with so many incredible educators,” says Zimmerman. “And to be making an impact in the lives of others.”

Read Zimmerman’s post in the Apple Education Community Forum

For many immigrants and refugees in the United States, joining a new community can be an overwhelming experience. Language barriers often become an enduring challenge, especially when seeking job opportunities or continuing their education.

In Idaho, the Onramp programme’s goal is to build the state’s workforce by developing Idaho educators and expanding opportunities for students. This statewide programme is a partnership between Apple, Boise State University, the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance and the College of Western Idaho (CWI). For CWI instructors like Sarah Strickley, helping immigrants and refugees develop more English communication skills enables them to feel closer to their communities and empowers them to make a difference. “For equity to happen, we need to educate leaders that look like the world,” Strickley says.

CWI’s English language learner (ELL) and English as a second language programme offers free English and digital skills classes to speakers of other languages. With support from Apple’s Community Education Initiative team, this programme incorporates the Everyone Can Create curriculum, an introduction to Develop in Swift and devices to aid digital skills acquisition.

Strickley has been teaching ELL for over 10 years, and she designed a course within the programme that teaches English through code and vice versa. She works with more than 150 students across 30 countries of origin, with more than 31 languages spoken.

Students have varying educational levels and experience with technology. Some have never interacted with an iPad before, while some have advanced credentials from their home country. What they have in common is a communication barrier that limits potential job opportunities. Strickley says, “The goal is a sustainable programme that every student is able to touch, no matter where they are on their educational journey.” Her approach to teaching both language and code reinforces the unique strengths and skills within every student.

Strickley believes that creativity plays a major role in bringing people closer to their community. She incorporates Challenge Based Learning — an approach to leveraging technology to solve real-world problems — which often becomes the first interaction for many of these students with their communities. They’re actively learning to make connections and creatively solve problems, while simultaneously building self-confidence and valuable social capital.

Immigrants and refugees often arrive in Idaho without a network or support system, and Strickley’s efforts with CWI ultimately empower them to find their own voice and build their place in a community they now call home.

“Every one of us is a bundle of knowledge, regardless of our language, accent, background or circumstance," Strickley says. “And education helps us share that knowledge with each other towards more understanding.” For her, technology is an equaliser that helps everyone get on the same page. With devices in hand and newfound technological knowledge, every community member has the potential to find or even create their own success.

There’s a saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” In Birmingham, Alabama, USA, Ed Farm intends to grow digital skills and talent across the tech field for generations to come. In early 2020, Apple partnered with Birmingham City Schools, the Alabama Power Foundation and TechAlabama to launch Ed Farm to foster educational equity and develop the workforce of tomorrow. Opportunities and technology are now more accessible in this community‑driven education ecosystem.

Birmingham area residents of all ages can participate in Ed Farm in a variety of ways. The Teacher Fellows programme, with the support of Apple Professional Learning Specialists, develops educators who are passionate about innovations in learning and helps them integrate Apple’s Everyone Can Code curriculum into their lesson plans. The Student Fellows programme cultivates skills in middle and high schoolers through Challenge Based Learning, an approach to leveraging technology to solve real-world problems. And the Pathways to Tech programme offers a free course on Apple’s Swift programming language that also promotes the attainment of post-secondary credentials. Ed Farm connects to Birmingham in a unique way as it’s supported by and for the community, all to reimagine education through technology.

Nikia Hackworth found Pathways to Tech to be a life-changing experience for her and her family. After a long career in the financial industry, she discovered information about Ed Farm on social media, and it piqued her interest. She says, “You can’t go wrong with learning something new” when describing her Pathways to Tech experience and how she gained more knowledge about code and technology. She began to apply these digital skills towards a new career as a business analyst. Hackworth’s role isn’t rooted in writing a coding language; it’s to speak the language that involves code as she works as a liaison between technology and business teams.

Ed Farm doesn’t just teach people how to code, it shows that the tech field has multiple paths — from product owners to project managers to business analysts like Hackworth, and more. She firmly believes that “education will help you grow. The more you know, the more you grow.”

Ed Farm is a digital education partner for communities and its impact spans K–12, higher education and the workforce — helping to transform Birmingham into a southern Silicon Valley. This partnership shines a light on opportunities Birmingham residents may not have known existed and opens new doors for growth. According to Hackworth, “In order to grow, we have to get out of the small box we might find ourselves in, and go into another box where we could blossom to be the big tree that we’re supposed to be.”

Hollyhill, a suburb of Cork City in Ireland, is home to Apple’s European headquarters. It’s also the home of Terence MacSwiney Community College, a Cork Education and Training Board School serving students from ages 12 through 18. In 2015, the school’s leadership entered into a partnership with Apple.

As part of this collaboration, Apple volunteers began working alongside teachers at the school to help implement the Everyone Can Code and Everyone Can Create curricula, aimed at increasing student engagement through coding and creativity. Additionally, Apple provided the necessary funding and technology so the students could have hands-on learning experiences.

The partnership was a positive spark for the community. The students at Terence MacSwiney Community College were now being exposed to the latest in technology and creativity. And from working with Apple volunteers, they started learning about careers that many of them didn’t know existed. “These very interesting people came into our school and opened the students’ minds to possibilities and dreams for themselves,” says Eva Corbett, a post-primary teacher at Terence MacSwiney.

Corbett, who teaches Apple curriculum-based courses, has witnessed the impact of the partnership first-hand and has numerous anecdotes of student success. One of these stories comes from an Everyone Can Code class, where students developed an app prototype called Food Fund. “The app was designed to assist with the management of a social action project, also created by students, to reduce food waste in local schools, redistribute food to a local charity called Penny Dinners and raise awareness of food needs in our community,” says Corbett.

Another story that Corbett shares is about a group of girls who wrote an original song called “Live Out Loud” in an Everyone Can Create class. The anthem they composed was so powerful that it was selected to be part of a government-led national campaign to celebrate LGBTI+ young people. The group is now using GarageBand and iMovie to produce their own music and videos. “In terms of how it will impact their future, it’ll give them confidence to try new things,” says Corbett.

Ultimately, Corbett says, the partnership with Apple has brought a culture of creativity and innovation to Terence MacSwiney Community College. “A lot of the kids don’t think they’re creative until they come to the Everyone Can Create class,” she says. “But they start drawing on their iPad and end up discovering a new world of innovation.”