If you're a parent and find yourself suddenly homeschooling your children, we have put together a list of our favorite resources for all ages to learn software development. If you're interested in getting more STEM/STEAM resources into your children's hands right now, check out these recommendations. Each of these books, apps, and websites are 100% free to use or have free promotional offers. Shout outs to all the teachers out there too, we appreciate you more than you know!
UPDATED 4/3/2020
Children under the age of 10
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Free with promo code: You don’t have to be an engineer to get kids excited about electronics. All you need is a good story.
Carrot Pants Press is offering free copies of both books,
Ed Gets His Power Back and
Ellie Saves the Day. All you need to cover is the cost to ship them two you and you can have one or both hardcover children's books for free. Head over to
the store and use the code
"STEAMSTORYTIME" at checkout to snag some copies. These books are perfect
for teaching beginner electronics concepts to kids between the ages of 3 and 10.
- FREE: Coding is the new literacy! With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) can program their own interactive stories and games. In the process, they learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer. ScratchJr is available as a free app on Apple, Google Play, Chrome Web Store, and Amazon.
Children over the age of 10
- FREE: With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community. Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century. Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge. Start Creating!
- FREE: CoderDojo is a global movement of free, open, volunteer-led coding clubs (Dojos) where young people aged 7–17 (Ninjas) can explore digital technology with the support of their fellow Ninjas and volunteer mentors. Here is a collection of some projects and lessons that are used in Dojos around the world.
- 7-day free trial: of the Mimo app provides bite-sized lessons making it easy to squeeze in a little coding time between school assignments and chores. Mimo makes learning to code easy and fun. Download the app on the Apple App Store or Google Play and begin your coding journey.
Teenagers and adults 16 +
- Free all of April: Pluralsight CEO, Aaron Skonnard, shares why all 7,000+ expert-led video courses and more are free for the month of April. Follow #FreeApril on Twitter. Start learning!
- Discounted courses: Udemy offers 100,000 online courses for all ages and has the world's largest collection of courses on a variety of fresh topics. New additions are published every month and heavy discounts are often available.
- egghead.io provides short, instructional screencast video tutorials for web developers. Learn the best JavaScript tools and frameworks from industry pros. Browse catalog
- FREE: freeCodeCamp is a bit more advanced and totally free. freeCodeCamp has 5000+ tutorials for you and your children to learn to code, build your own projects, and get certifications in Responsive Web Design, JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures, Front End Libraries, Data Visualization, APIs and Microservices, and Information Security and Quality Assurance.
- FREE: Quarantine Code Intro to HTML and CSS is a 4-week course taught via Google Hangouts by local Software Developer, Eric Boggs @ETBoggs on Twitter. You will need a Laptop, Visual Studio Code, a good attitude, Google Chrome, and maybe a beer. UPDATE: These classes are currently full, register your interest and Eric will add more classes in the next few weeks!
Other online tools
- FREE: Tinkercad is a free, easy-to-use app for 3D design, electronics, and coding. It's used by teachers, kids, hobbyists, and designers to imagine, design, and make anything! Start tinkering!
- FREE: JSFiddle is your humble code playground! Edit, test, execute and share your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor within your web browser.