October 23, 2013 at 16:35HTML Academy, Habr and crowdfunding
HTML Academy is an interactive online course in HTML and CSS. The project has existed for more than a year, during which we have created more than 15 courses, most of which are free. All this time the work was carried out on pure enthusiasm, however, now it is already necessary to go to a new level in order to make courses more often, cooler and more useful. There are many ways to do this, and one of them is public finance.
All training at the academy takes place in a practical mode. In fact, it comes down to passing a huge number of practical tasks. The practical task looks like this:
Familiar cats, isn't it? This is one of the course assignments about using backgrounds. By the way, many thanks to centaurus for great cats .
To complete the task, the student must complete several tasks, which are listed in the lower left block. To do this, he changes the code in the editors, and the result in real time is checked and displayed in the "mini-browser". And, of course, for each task there is a small theoretical block.
In addition to practical tasks, there are so-called “tests”. This is one of the features of the project, which distinguishes it from a number of analogues. The task of the test is very simple - "make it like in the picture." Actually, this is one of the typical tasks of a layout designer. In the picture below you will see one of the students' favorite tests, which completes the course on selectors.
In this test, selectors must be selected so that biathlon targets are obtained. Students enthusiastically perform it from half an hour to five hours, depending on how perfect they want to achieve a perfect match. For training, this is just a wonderful result.
We do courses following a specific plan. Especially for this, we have prepared a training map, from which it becomes clear in what order to take courses and what is the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal, by the way, is very simple and understandable - the student will be able to independently make up a medium complexity model.
Courses gradually become more complicated if you move down the map. If in the first courses students indulge in tags, then in the last they make up real interface elements, for example, such:
Well, we got to know a little. And here is the link to the site: htmlacademy.ru
In short, we want to create a new free series of courses.
The series of courses that you saw on the map is called the “basic cycle”. It gives a lot of theory and some important applied things, such as creating decorative elements, some interface elements, creating grids and so on. It is assumed that by collecting all the acquired skills together, the student will be able to make up a simple layout after going through the cycle.
Of course, it would be much more efficient to make an application series after the basic series, in which the student would build the site from scratch in a step-by-step mode. I would like to make this series free and accessible to everyone. However, I admit honestly, now we just will not pull this task. Although there is already an opportunity to do this: developers are found who are ready to take up the job, vast experience has been gained in creating such courses, and so on.
But, as usual, everything depends on finances. Therefore, we decided to try our luck in crowdfunding and launched the project “ Make VK! Contact! "On boomstarter.
If you have questions, ask them, we will try to answer as detailed as possible.
I think many will immediately have analogies with Codecademy. Of course, the approaches are very similar: "interactive + work with code + gamification." In fact, there is nothing to worry about, because there is a sea of video courses (which generally have the same approach). But there are more significant differences:
Firstly , we are initially a Russian-language project and try to write in a simple and understandable language for Russian-speaking people. All courses are fully copyrighted.
Secondly , we are more focused. We take narrower topics and work them out as deeply as possible. This is evidenced by the comments of users who studied with us and with them:
Thirdly , the technology platform is also its own and it is geared towards studying web interfaces.
Well, the last. The training methodology is also original. Its essence: "competency-based approach + testing." Thanks to this technique, we set ourselves a fairly daring goal - to massively prepare professionals of a good level, and not just engage in the promotion of web technologies. The goal is far away, and moving towards it is both difficult and interesting.
A bit about HTML Academy
All training at the academy takes place in a practical mode. In fact, it comes down to passing a huge number of practical tasks. The practical task looks like this:
Familiar cats, isn't it? This is one of the course assignments about using backgrounds. By the way, many thanks to centaurus for great cats .
To complete the task, the student must complete several tasks, which are listed in the lower left block. To do this, he changes the code in the editors, and the result in real time is checked and displayed in the "mini-browser". And, of course, for each task there is a small theoretical block.
In addition to practical tasks, there are so-called “tests”. This is one of the features of the project, which distinguishes it from a number of analogues. The task of the test is very simple - "make it like in the picture." Actually, this is one of the typical tasks of a layout designer. In the picture below you will see one of the students' favorite tests, which completes the course on selectors.
In this test, selectors must be selected so that biathlon targets are obtained. Students enthusiastically perform it from half an hour to five hours, depending on how perfect they want to achieve a perfect match. For training, this is just a wonderful result.
We do courses following a specific plan. Especially for this, we have prepared a training map, from which it becomes clear in what order to take courses and what is the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal, by the way, is very simple and understandable - the student will be able to independently make up a medium complexity model.
Courses gradually become more complicated if you move down the map. If in the first courses students indulge in tags, then in the last they make up real interface elements, for example, such:
Well, we got to know a little. And here is the link to the site: htmlacademy.ru
And what is crowdfunding?
In short, we want to create a new free series of courses.
The series of courses that you saw on the map is called the “basic cycle”. It gives a lot of theory and some important applied things, such as creating decorative elements, some interface elements, creating grids and so on. It is assumed that by collecting all the acquired skills together, the student will be able to make up a simple layout after going through the cycle.
Of course, it would be much more efficient to make an application series after the basic series, in which the student would build the site from scratch in a step-by-step mode. I would like to make this series free and accessible to everyone. However, I admit honestly, now we just will not pull this task. Although there is already an opportunity to do this: developers are found who are ready to take up the job, vast experience has been gained in creating such courses, and so on.
But, as usual, everything depends on finances. Therefore, we decided to try our luck in crowdfunding and launched the project “ Make VK! Contact! "On boomstarter.
If you have questions, ask them, we will try to answer as detailed as possible.
Small PS
I think many will immediately have analogies with Codecademy. Of course, the approaches are very similar: "interactive + work with code + gamification." In fact, there is nothing to worry about, because there is a sea of video courses (which generally have the same approach). But there are more significant differences:
Firstly , we are initially a Russian-language project and try to write in a simple and understandable language for Russian-speaking people. All courses are fully copyrighted.
Secondly , we are more focused. We take narrower topics and work them out as deeply as possible. This is evidenced by the comments of users who studied with us and with them:
Thirdly , the technology platform is also its own and it is geared towards studying web interfaces.
Well, the last. The training methodology is also original. Its essence: "competency-based approach + testing." Thanks to this technique, we set ourselves a fairly daring goal - to massively prepare professionals of a good level, and not just engage in the promotion of web technologies. The goal is far away, and moving towards it is both difficult and interesting.