Maybe I'm biased from seeing one after the other but recently there has been so many data points on, how to call it, self-paced teaching/learning that I think this movement has definitely gained critical mass. People still debate endlessly about the relative merits of classroom teaching vs. approaches like Khan Academy, but the enormous success of Stanford and MIT online courses followed by codecademy and now this is, to me, irrefutable proof of a huge need.<p>The next step is to diversify these approaches to other domains, i.e. x.cademy. How about creative writing, web design, typography, plumbing, general relativity (if you think this is far fetched, check out all the questions from laymen on Physics exchange about GTR and gravity)? It would be great if there were a standard way of putting together course materials, i.e. a wrapper format and standard ways of presentation.
The more people learn the better. We should also encourage programming to younger generations.<p>I came across the Fedora Sugar on a Stick distro and fell in love with it.<p><a href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/" rel="nofollow">http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/</a><p>I've been making copies and handing them out to all my cousins and relatives. The Python coding sections are impressive.
Why even acknowledge the number of signups for a service like this?<p>Should I even care how many accounts are created? I'd be more interested in either % conversion for how many people signed up for classes, or % who completed the free test classes.<p>Is 100,000 people entering their details into a form even a laudable achievement from the perspective of the general public (or even the programming public)?
I think this demonstrates that lots of people have a desire to understand code but do not know where to start. 5 years ago I wanted to apply for Computer Science because I knew I loved computers. However, my math is not great and I would never have been accepted so I picked Politics instead. I dropped out after two months.<p>I am a self-taught coder but I think what I bring to the table is a reasonable understanding of how humans interact with my code. I test all my sites out on my grandma. If she can use it then I know it is easy enough to use.<p>Computer Science and software design are two very different areas. I think I would have got into coding much earlier if I had been able to apply for the latter.
The key question that still remains is, how do you find the best learning sources and how do you get credit for it? Are badges the right solution? Its great to see that these many people are embracing self-paced learning. With the democratization of education, it has opened doors for anyone to create a curriculum online now. But all this will soon cause an information overload in terms of self-paced learning opportunities and it will become critical to start organizing this plethora of resources
It helps to have the huge email list of codecademy. If only I could get a link to <a href="http://oneworldcollege.com" rel="nofollow">http://oneworldcollege.com</a> on there :) Still, I'm excited to see education go mainstream like this.