The Khan Academy usually offers online coaching lessons for students that wish to excel academically in subjects such as math, biology, chemistry, to mention a few. But this week, the Academy will be marking the Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) by giving online subscribers a one hour chance of sharpening coding skills.
“This week, over five million people across 167 countries will try out coding for the first time,” noted Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, “at your end of your hour, you’ll have coded your very own greeting card to send to someone this holiday season.”
The activity coincides with the CSEdWeek, an annual program dedicated to inspiring students to take interest in computer science that was originally conceived by the Computing in the Core coalition. And for the first time this year, Code.org is producing CSEdWeek for the first time this year, recognising the birthday of computing pioneer, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper born on 9 December 1906. The event would continue this weekend.
To mark the celebration, many computer institutions among others that focus on the ‘STEM’ subjects such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics, like Khan Academy have joined in the celebration, offering millions a chance to code for the first time.
“When I first started Khan Academy I managed to pull the site together with some pretty rusty coding skills I had picked up in college. The founders of Facebook, Instagram, and Google all started their journeys with just one line of code. That’s how all great coders start out,” noted Samanl, a witness on the benefits of coding not only claims that coding is as simple as typing.
The Khan Academy now boasts of having millions of followers. The Academy is a not-for-profit organization that runs with the goal of “changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere”. Thus, its resources have become available to students, teachers, home-schoolers and even adults returning to the classroom after 20 years offering its materials and resources are available to completely free of charge.
In the online Academy, library content is available to students topped with interactive challenges, assessments, and videos from any computer with access to the web. Moreover, coaches, parents, and teachers have unprecedented visibility into what their students are learning and doing on the Khan Academy.
Its library content covers math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each problem in a subject like math, is randomly generated, giving ample practice material. Every single problem is broken down, step-by-step, with the click of a button. Subscribers can even watch a related video if more help is needed, say developers.
“I enjoyed the online lessons; they helped me a great deal when I was struggling with chemistry!” commented Olivia Doobay, one of the Academy’s subscribers. But while coding can seems challenging experience to many, Khan Academy has now created an interactive hour of coding that would help individuals how to code. Click here for details.