Context: this is a copy of the original School of Code “one pager”. In Feb 23, 2023’s call, there was a prompt to revisit this document before moving forward with any UX redesign, to make sure we adhere to any of the still-relevant values from the project’s origin.

The ask: spend no more than 1 hour reading this document and leaving comments on what you think is important to continue to prioritize, highlighting where context may have changed, or whatever else you want to point out. We’ll review in the next sync to ensure we move forward on the same foundation.

What is the School of Code?

<aside> 🧑‍🎓 GM! Developer DAO School of Code is an open-source education platform.

We seek to empower developers with knowledge and tools that can be applied to real-world projects while promoting a healthy learning environment.

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How it Started?

<aside> 💡 The School of Code project stemmed from the Education Team within Developer DAO. As a group of novice developers, we were searching for opportunities to contribute and the idea for creating an education platform that we could contribute to and learn from at the same time originated. Since the project is being developed from a novice learner's perspective, it aims to alleviate some of the challenges faced by us and prioritises keeping assumptions of knowledge to a minimum so that even the absolute beginner can be onboarded as a web3 dev.

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How can we make an Impact on Education?

<aside> 🤝 The web3 ecosystem is scaling at an incredible pace but the resources for educating and empowering developers and helping them onboard are still in a nascent stage.

Some difficulties faced by learners:

• Hopping platforms to stay on top of the emerging tools and skills necessary
• Lack of adequate easy-to-understand learning resources
• Extensive additional learning is required to apply knowledge from current resources to real-world projects
• Toggling through various platforms for doubt resolution
• Burnout from studying long hours

How we solve it:

• One-stop learning platform with resources targeting a variety of tools and skills
• Unique Curriculum to include various styles of learners
• Knowledge extendable to real-world projects with slight adaptation
• In-App dedicated forum in each learning resource
• Pomodoro Timer for reminders to take regular breaks

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Highlights of our Resources

<aside> 📚 Some areas we’ve researched and focused on are:

• Inclusivity of different styles of learners: We realised that some learners prefer to dive right into projects whereas others like to go through fundamental lessons first. A feature of this that we’ve added is two way linking where the fundamental lessons link to a project lesson where they are applied and vice versa.
• Grade of language: In all our project resources, every concept has a working explanation using learner-friendly language. It is similar to the popular Reddit format Explain Like I’m 5 (ELI5) and assumptions of prior knowledge are kept to a minimum.
• Technical Deep Dives: For the curious learners that would like to learn a concept in-depth, we have included pop-ups (side-drawers). This allows interested learners to get deeper knowledge within the flow of a lesson without disrupting it for anyone content with a working overview of a concept.
• Ability to contribute to real-world projects: Our resources aim to empower developers with the knowledge that can be implemented in the real world with but little additional learning/ adaptation. </aside>

3 Month Goals [from MVP]

<aside> 🥅 Our goals post MVP are:

• In-App forum: Learners often have to navigate through various sites and platforms like Stack Exchange and Discord for solving doubts and this can be difficult and also take your focus away from the lesson. Our platform seeks to integrate a dedicated forum for each resource (lesson) so that learners can ask doubts on-site. This also has the added benefit of answers being curated for a given lesson.
• Completing Project Track 1: On average, it takes about 3-4 weeks for our content team to draft, iterate on and test a lesson due to the small size of our team. We have 3 additional lessons planned for the current track and aim to complete them in the 3-month time frame.
• Pomodoro Timer: For a healthy learning experience it is essential that learners do not experience burnout. Our Pomodoro timer will let learners choose the best fit of study-to-break time for them and forget about it as they continue to learn. Based on set times it will give friendly reminders. 🌱 </aside>

Long Term Goals

<aside> 🔭 Since the initial days of this project we have pictured this as a long term project and here are some of the long term goals we have for the project:

• Onboard 5000 devs to web3 by 2026
• Regularly add resources: We want our platform to be a one-stop for a learner to gain any knowledge relevant to the web3 ecosystem and for that we will continue researching and churning out resources on emerging tools, protocols, languages and concepts.
• Tool agnostic platform: We will provide learners with all the relevant knowledge and let them choose what’s the best fit for their application. This also ties in with a sub-goal where learners can come to learn just a specific concept, see a working example of it and implement it in their code.
• Proof of Competence Rewards System: The focus of our platform is the learning experience in a healthy environment but for the interested learners we will devise a Proof of Competence rewards system that tests the ability of a learner to apply the concepts learnt. </aside>

Why do we need grants and how will we use them?

<aside> 🏦 The Developer DAO School of Code is an open-source project and a public good being developed by a small team of contributors. Some work on it full time while others dedicate sizeable chunks of their time to it. The platform has a large scope and seeks to make the learning process and onboarding to web3 easier in a healthy learning environment.

Getting a grant would help the current contributors continue their work on developing the platform without being weighed down by some financial limitations. It would also help us expand our team and scale this project at a faster pace.

Help us continue our work on a platform that will onboard devs to web3 and in turn help them build things can further boost this ecosystem!

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Some other ways to help us