codecademy-for-teachers

Learn From Home: A Guide for Teachers, Students, and Parents During Covid-19

03/20/2020

Dear teachers, students, and parents,

School may have stopped, but learning never does.

This post was updated on August 31, 2020.

With schools closing rapidly in the wake of this unprecedented pandemic, people around the world have been thrown into an uncertain situation. To lend a hand during this time, we gave away 10,000 student scholarships to Codecademy Pro in the Spring of 2020, which unlocks all the courses and content in our catalog.

With the start of the Fall semester, learning is going to continue to be different. Which is why we’re excited to announce a brand new discounted membership for college students — and a whole collection of resources for the new school year. You can find out more in our Student Center.

Codecademy is an online learning platform that has taught millions of people how to code in areas like computer science, web development, mobile development, game development, and data science. We offer courses on 14 different programming languages, each packed with fun and easy interactive lessons, quizzes, projects, articles, and videos. And since each course is structured for self-guided learning, they can easily be done from home.

Our mission is to empower people to transform their lives by learning modern skills. But beyond that, we’re also a team of teachers, students, and parents ourselves. We’re dealing with the same situation at home, and we believe that the best way to get through it is by helping one another. So everyone at Codecademy is working as hard as they can to aid our learners during this disruption. School may have stopped, but learning never does.

Here’s how you can get started.


For Students:

No matter where you are in your learning journey, we’ve got you covered. Learn how to build a website, a data visualization, a mobile app, a mini-game, a hardware project, a chatbot, and more.

If you haven’t started coding before, try HTML and CSS — the building blocks of web pages. If you are currently studying programming in high school, our Learn Java course is a great fit for someone in AP Computer Science.

Take a look at the course recommendations at the end of this post to find the coursework best suited for you. 👇

We highly encourage you to think about apps and tools that you can build for your community during this time. We’ve already seen some creative projects:

  • Do Not Touch Your Face, a web app that helps everyone avoid touching their face using a machine learning algorithm.
  • Corona 100m, a mobile app that alerts the user if they come within 100 meters of a Covid-19 affected area in South Korea.

Remember, if you get stuck or need help, visit the Codecademy Forums to ask a question or share your progress. And grab your friends and classmates to join you so you have some coding buddies!

For Teachers:

Join thousands of teachers around the world who are assigning optional curriculum to help students continue their progress.

Our Paths offer step-by-step guidance toward a specific skill or career and are perfect for your students to take together. For example, check out the Web Development Path for building websites and the Computer Science Path for programming fundamentals.

Paths contain interactive lessons, quizzes, and projects. A lesson teaches new concepts, while a project allows students to apply what they’ve learned; each take approximately 20 to 40 minutes to complete.

We recommend:

  • Picking a path or course based on your class’s grade level and interest (see course recommendation below for guidance).
  • Creating a lesson plan or a calendar for your class to follow.
  • Hosting weekly discussions and check-ins with your students about their progress.
  • Building team projects throughout the course.

Here’s an example of a week’s lesson plan, from the start of the Computer Science Path:

Date Description
Monday                Lesson: Learn Python Syntax
Quiz: Learn Python Syntax
Tuesday Discussion about Monday’s lesson
Project: Lovely Loveseats Furniture Store
Wednesday Lesson: Introduction to Functions
Quiz: Introduction to Functions
Thursday Discussion about Wednesday’s lesson
Project: Getting Ready For Physics Class
Friday Build a team project! 💪                                                   

Some teachers are also getting creative by using streaming services like YouTube or Twitch, online learning tools like Google Classroom or Blackboard, and messaging apps like Slack or Discord. When paired with online platforms like Codecademy, these tools can help maintain an engaging learning environment by encouraging communication and collaboration.

A high school teacher using Blackboard to stream Learn CSS.

We’d also recommend joining the Codecademy Community for more resources.

For Parents:

Coding will not only help your child improve their math and language skills,* but it also teaches them how to think abstractly and solve problems creatively.

Whether your child is in middle school learning Scratch or in college majoring in Computer Science, we have a course that will suit their needs. Our platform is self-guided and self-paced, so getting started from home is easy.

We recommend:

  • Setting a goal with your child. For example, “aim for one lesson per day and take notes”. Let them have a say in how, when, and where they want to do their work. This is a great chance to build their metacognition — where they can become more aware of how their own learning and thinking process works.
  • Creating a calendar and daily schedule like this or this.
  • Coding along with them!

* Learners must be at least 13 years old to create an account.


🙋 I’m an educator responding to Covid-19, what courses should my students take?

We have a large library of content offerings for students of all different ages. Our Curriculum Team has taken the time to break out recommendations by education level in our catalog library. We’ve also included time estimates by age group for educators planning curricula for longer time periods.

🥚 Beginner (13+)

Topic Description Course Links
Introduction to Coding This course teaches students to think creatively about abstract concepts like a programmer, without actually coding. Great for getting new coders interested in the subject and laying a strong foundation. Learn How to Code
(6 hours)
Build a Website This content is approachable for many students across the age spectrum. It teaches students how to leverage basic languages of the web to build websites. One of the projects teaches students how to make a fashion blog. Learn HTML
Learn CSS
(16 hours)

🐣 High School

Topic Description Course Links
Introduction to Coding This content does not teach a particular programming language, but rather introduces the concepts with drag and drop interfaces and approachable explanations for students to explore the world of coding. Code Foundations
Build a Website This content is approachable for many students across the age spectrum. It teaches students how to leverage basic languages of the web to build websites. Learn HTML
Learn CSS
Intro to JavaScript
Intro to jQuery
AP Computer Science The fundamentals of computer science with Python. We recommend this for AP Computer Science students. Computer Science Path

🐥 Undergraduate

Topic Description Course Links
Core
Programming 101 This content compares to what is taught in most introductory CS college classes. Learn Python
Learn C++
Learn Java
Data Structures and Algorithms This content is traditionally seen towards the second half of introductory CS classes. It covers different ways to organize data in data structures and evluates some common algorithms. Linear Data Structures
Complex Data Structures
Searching Algorithms
Sorting Algorithms
Databases This content is an introduction to relational databases and SQL. Learn SQL
Statistics This content is an introduction to statistical measures and techniques with Python. Learn Statistics with Python
(Prereq: Python)
Electives
Web Applications The Web Development Path offers weeks worth of content that will teach you how to build interactive websites using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Web Development Path
Mobile Development Learn Swift course will teach you the essential skills necessary to begin building iOS apps. Learn Swift
(Android coming soon)
Game Development C++ and C# are two of the most popular languages used in the gaming industry and applicable to platforms such as Unreal Engine (C++) and Unity (C#). Create Video Games with Phaser teaches you how to build video games using JavaScript and the Phaser.js library. Create Video Games with Phaser
Learn C++
Learn C#

🐓 Graduate School

Topic Description Course Links
Data Visualization Learn data cleaning, data processing, and data visualization. Start with R for research-based work, Python for a more general-purpose language, and D3 if you have familiarity with JS and web technologies. Learn R
Data Analysis with Pandas
Data Visualization with Python
Learn D3
Machine Learning This course introduces you to the basics of machine learning using Python. Learn how to build systems that can make predictions and recommendations using real data. Get Started with Machine Learning
(Prereq: Python)
Natural Language Processing NLP is the field at the intersection of linguistics and artificial intelligence. This content introduces you to the techniques of NLP and the different kinds of text-based analyses. Natural Language Processing
(Prereq: Python)
Web Scraping Web scraping is a useful tool for extracting data from websites. This course introduces you to the rules and techniques of web scraping with the Python package BeautifulSoup. Learn Web Scraping with Beautiful Soup
(Prereq: Python & HTML)

Stay safe and keep learning,

The Codecademy Team

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