Monday, September 28, 2015

New course: Learn jQuery with our interactive tutorials!

jQuery is currently the most popular JS library on the web - it's included on 65% of the top 10 million highest trafficked websites! jQuery is so popular because it makes it easy to make your webpages interactive with features like slideshows, form validation, and slick animations. 

jQuery was also invented by one of our Khan Academy engineers: John Resig. He invented jQuery way back in 2006 and when he joined KA in 2012, he invented our interactive programming environment.

Today, we're happy to announce that we are teaching jQuery on Khan Academy, in that interactive environment! The tutorials in our jQuery course cover DOM access & manipulation, DOM events, Form processing, and Animation, using a mix of 15 talk-throughs, 15 challenges, 5 projects - plus a video interview with John Resig:

If you're a student interested in frontend web development - in making your own full-featured webpages - then we now have a full track of courses for you:

If you take all those courses in order, you'll have a great understanding of the fundamentals of web development. That's not all there is to frontend, of course - but we'll keep building courses and listing additional resources for you at the end of each course.

If you're a teacher who wants the students in your class to learn web development, then you can assign all of these courses in our coach report tools, and track the progress of your students. Learn more in our teacher’s guide.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Congrats, Summer of Scripters!

In June, we invited Khan Academy students to join us for a Summer of Scripting. Over the next 2 months, I sent weekly emails to thousands of students, reminding them with their weekly goals - plus we had contests and office hours. As an online teacher, it can be easy to forget that I have students, but this summer, it felt like much more of a classroom. :)

First, I want to give a huge congratulations to all of the students that started learning JS this summer!

Congratulations, Summer of Scripters!


To the 1,555 students that finished every single challenge and earned the JS badge this summer: Amazing work!

Confetti Craze


To the hundreds of students that entered our Summer of Scripting contests: thank you for wowing me with your creativity!

Celebrate With Minions!


Here are some more fun stats:

  • The most active day of the summer was June 24th, with 9,191 students completing JS challenges. That day is also my birthday - so thanks y'all for a great birthday gift!
  • ~30,000 students started learning JS this summer because of Summer of Scripting.
  • ~3,000 students got all the way through the 40-hour course to the final tutorial on Object-Oriented Design.
  • Typically, about ~32% of our JS students are female. This summer, 40% of them were female. Getting closer to 50/50!
  • We got 2,378 bits of feedback from students in the follow-up surveys- and read them all. That feedback will be super useful for helping us figure out how to improve the JS course and Summer of Scripting.

Thanks again to all the students who were a part of our JS classroom this summer, and to all of the fantastic community members that answered questions, evaluated projects, and helped our new students learn JS. Onwards to the fall!