Mozilla is getting ready for the January semester of School of Webcraft, a 100% free developer training resource run in partnership with Peer 2 Peer University.
Last semester, the School of Webcraft offered 15 classes; now, Mozilla is trying to get around 30 classes going for the January semester.
Classes will be between six and 10 weeks long; they’ll revolve around topics relevant to web designers and developers, including HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. Previous classes have also included non-developer topics such as organic SEO. Requisite skill levels will run the gamut from novice to expert. The volunteer-run courses will begin on January 26, and proposals for new course ideas are still being accepted.
Students learn through a combination of free and open learning materials, online study groups and hands-on assignments that test their hacking skills.
If you’re a leader in the developer community, you can also step up and lead a course yourself. If you want to organize a class, you’ll get support from P2PU and Mozilla in the form of course design, materials, learning facilitation and other resources.
Registration opens on January 8; until then, you can sign up for the School of Webcraft e-mail list.
Mozilla believes that developer training is “both at the high school and university level… out of date, lousy and losing students.” Another problem is that younger learners simply don’t have access to good web dev learning resources. And certification training is expensive and often out of step with current practices.
By creating a completely free, open training ground for developers and would-be developers of all stripes, Mozilla hopes to remedy some of the problems surrounding technology education.
We fully support this mission; anything that will allow more people to become better informed about and more proficient in web development and related technologies is a win in our book.
Of course, we’d love to see more than just front-end and markup languages explored; but for that to happen, some knowledgeable devs are going to have to volunteer to teach their peers the basics (or not-so-basics) of other programming languages.
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