It’s been a busy week at SitePoint HQ here in Melbourne. On Tuesday, we launched the new SitePoint design. But before that, on Monday, we announced we’re opening up Learnable.com (SitePoint’s sister site) to ten thousand Australian students for free.
Why? A few reasons…
First, we believe students should have the opportunity to learn to code.
“For me, learning to code in year 11 set my career in motion.” Mark Harbottle, SitePoint Co-founder
Understanding the ways applications, computers, and websites work is vital for the new economy.
Some schools are ahead of the curve. For example, Brentwood Secondary College, a Government School in Melbourne (where we’re piloting Learnable in classrooms), offers in-depth technology courses for all students. But many schools don’t have the resources to offer basic computer sciences—especially not real world coding—so students miss out. We support changes in the curriculum that bring more technology training, but we’re aware changing the curriculum takes time. Our aim is to give access to students now.
Most of the developers here at SitePoint are self-taught. We know how important it is to have great resources for learning new technologies.
From Kevin Yank’s legendary “Build Your First Website: Getting Started with HTML and CSS” to Russ Weakly’s newest “Responsive Web Design in Action”, Learnable is full of brilliant lessons from experts. For students who want to put in the time to learn how to build websites, the resources are all there.
It’s part of our story
SitePoint wouldn’t exist if founders Mark and Matt didn’t get into Computer Science at a young age. Matt first started developing SitePoint (first as webmasterbase.com) whenhe was just 15 years old.
We’re acutely aware of the incredible things young people can build, and know that equipping students with technical skills can lead to awesome results.
Giving something back
For over 10 years, we’ve been posting tips and tutorials at SitePoint. And for over 10 years, you—the community—have supported us. From your loyal readership and comments, to the active forum members, book purchasers, and newsletter subscribers, none of this would have happened without you.
We try our best to do good—from sharing web best practices to using green energy at our office. Teaching kids to code is one of the issues we’re most passionate about, so this was a natural step.
Why Australia? Like many of our projects (99designs, flippa) it’s the first place we start. We’re exploring rolling the student program out around the world.
If you’re an Australian student, you can sign up here.
If you’re not an Australian student but want to access the thousands of videos and all the SitePoint books inside Learnable, we have a special offer of 45% off an annual membership.
This next year is going to be an exciting one for Learnable. Thanks for your support, and stay tuned.
Kyle Vermeulen
