ITeach — the Eco-responsible Programming Learning Platform

Having long hesitated between development and teaching, today I bring together both of my aspirations to serve everyone, after making an observation that seems rather obvious but is nonetheless concerning:

📌 Tech professionals are not necessarily interested in ecology.

📌 Ecology advocates often have other priorities than digital technology.

This is when iTeach was born, a project for an eco-responsible programming learning platform centered around four core values: interactivity, free access, ecology, and privacy. It aims to debunk the misconception that "IT is virtual and has no real environmental impact." 🌍

Indeed, servers, data transfers, everything virtual exists and contributes to our daily ecological footprint. It seems imperative to raise awareness about this, starting with developers, who tend to exploit the abundance of IT resources rather than opting for simplicity and eco-responsibility. 🌱

Regardless of your initial knowledge, iTeach enables you to become a competent web developer. The main courses are designed to train you effectively without delving too much into complex theoretical subjects. An introductory course provides initiation to the web world, followed by a JavaScript course teaching programming concepts and logic. 💻

Next, a React course teaches you how to create your own web applications. To conclude the main curriculum, an eco-design course shows you how to use IT resources responsibly, combining simplicity and efficiency. Optional additional courses cover advanced concepts and related topics for those wishing to go beyond the basics. You can also find cheat sheets for each course, providing a quick reference to a concept and copying relevant code snippets.

While many platforms offer theoretical courses, whether free or paid, using videos or images, offering projects to clone, files to download, focusing on specific themes or a broader range of courses... On iTeach, you have an all-in-one solution that allows you to quickly build skills without falling into the pitfalls of overly theoretical and complex courses. This is made possible through code snippets to complete directly on the course page and end-of-chapter quizzes! Moreover, no installation is required; you can learn and practice from anywhere, anytime. To top it off, an additional "sandbox" section allows you to practice freely by choosing an initial code from a list of presets.

Perhaps the project's strongest and most distinctive value is ecology, also the most underrepresented in the digital world. That's why iTeach goes against the tide by offering a dedicated eco-design course. Additionally, strong actions are taken: the almost complete absence of media on the entire platform, no calls to external services, and no database system.

In short, the goal is to use as few resources as possible to operate the system. To give you an idea, browsing the entire platform consumes less bandwidth than watching 3 seconds of a high-quality video! This inevitably results in some constraints, such as regarding statistics: not using a remote storage system means they are managed and stored locally.

Another value that is not given enough priority (although increasingly considered since the implementation of GDPR) is privacy. Fortunately, its implementation naturally stems from the ecology pillar because no behavioral analysis is carried out via a tool like Google Analytics, no advertising cookies are required, and thus, no data is transmitted. The absence of a database and login system also means that no personal information is stored. 🕵🏻‍♂️

What you need to remember is that privacy is a cornerstone of iTeach, aiming to go beyond the general rule that free services ultimately have a cost. But then, how could such a project come to life and, more importantly, remain sustainable? What is its business model? In reality, the choice is to have almost none. The only planned funding comes from a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, with the pre-launch link already available here. You can also browse the beta version of the platform here, but expect all the information to be detailed when the Kickstarter launches.

Why Kickstarter? iTeach is a time-consuming project and does not intend to generate revenue in the long run. However, it is necessary to verify that the project can generate enough interest while allowing its development to be financed. It is also crucial to get your feedback, in order to ensure the platform will have the best quality one would expect, despite being free. 💸

The campaign will be launched on February 13 and will last for a month. Having already conducted such a campaign in the past but for a completely different domain, I know that it is possible to rally around ideas that are worthwhile, and I hope that this one will seem to be part of that category. 💫