Kickstarter: Time to Drop the Mics!
By: Eric Allam
After a month of spreading the news about our first Kickstarter project, we are excited to finally get started on the Try iOS course that so many of you have helped us achieve! Thanks to all who contributed, you’re the reason we hit each of our goals and raised a grand total of $152,863. We wanted to post an update, whether you contributed or not, and let you know what is in store for our iOS courses and why you should care.
If you didn’t pledge:
By achieving our initial goal of $50K, it became possible for us to create a Try iOS course, intended for backers and those interested in purchasing. But the more we looked at Code School as a whole, and the many courses we’re about to roll out, we didn’t want the Code School community to miss out on this learning opportunity. We eventually decided to make the Try iOS course available to all Code School members in November. This course will explain how to build your own iPhone apps, and will have the usual screencasts, in-browser challenges, and Code School feel. We will be teaching iOS 6, the newest mobile platform from Apple that will be released in October (fingers crossed). This course will now be included with a Code School membership, so make sure you’re enrolled!
If you did pledge ($25 or more):
We are so thankful for your generosity and for those of you who came alongside us with your support (financial and otherwise!). For your pledge of $25 or more, you will receive the Try iOS course…forever. This means that this course will be yours even if you are not a Code School subscriber, similar to our other free courses. If you are a subscriber and you suspend or cancel your membership in the future, you will still have access to this course on Code School. You will be hearing from us over the next couple of weeks as we email you and collect addresses, shirt sizes, and all other necessary information for getting you the prizes you earned with your pledge. Seriously, thank you.
Hitting our goal of $150K ensured that while you’re on enjoying Try iOS, you can additionally try a free month of Code School! For non-subscribers, this will be a great chance for you to check out all Code School courses. If you are currently a subscribed member we will be giving you a free month too, so it’s business as usual, but with prize level perks! We are working to get your free month out as soon as possible, but those will hit your accounts no later than November. If you’ve never registered for Code School, you’ll want to register now (it’s free!), even if you don’t subscribe for a membership.
More for everyone:
Thanks to the continuing generosity of the coding community on Kickstarter, we went on to surpass our initial goal, and met all of our goals for making this course bigger and better. It will now also include two “making of” videos of the course building process, two additional levels of content, extra video hints for completing levels, and an iPhone development cheat sheet for helpful reference. Feel free to pause here and go hug someone if you need to.
Even with this upgraded version of Try iOS set in stone, we couldn’t stop people from lavishing more pledges upon us. So much so, that the $125K goal was reached, earning yet another course for the coding community, including non-Code School members. Now the whole world can come to Code School and take Try Objective-C, a free course that teaches the fundamentals of the language required for iPhone app development. We recommend that total beginners take this course before Try iOS, and get a foundation of the language before learning how to apply it. This course is set to release at the beginning of next year.
We hope you’re as excited as we are about these upcoming courses and that they prove valuable to you and your ongoing code education. Thanks for your support and well wishes along the way as we continue to look for more ways to help users learn by doing.
