When learning programming everything seems to be so far away. When teaching people you need concrete examples that are not buried under abstractions. Still, a newcomer can easily get overwhelmed by all the noise burying the important topics. You can feel paralyzed by it. But you can fight this effect by using concrete examples to teach and learn programming. APIs are a great example to empower students.
Wonderful explanation about APIs. This article also gives insight how we get introduced to this in college very frequently.
Having an understanding and using it to build an application using 3rd party APIs, will give you a feeling of empowerment.