Ben Scopato

You know what’s awesome?  Research.  You know what’s not awesome?  Not being able to get access to research because it’s stuck behind a paywall and you don’t belong to an institution/your institution doesn’t subscribe to that particular journal.

FEAR NOT.

Here is a list of free, open access materials on a variety of subjects.  Feel free to add if you like!

GO FORTH AND LEARN SHIT, MY FRIENDS.

Directory of Open Access Journals- A compendium of over 9000 journals from 133 countries, multilingual and multidisciplinary.

Directory of Open Access Books- Like the above, but for ebooks.  Also multidisciplinary.

Ubiquity Press- Journals covering archaeology, comics scholarship, museum studies, psychology, history, international development, and more.  Also publishes open access ebooks on a wide variety of subjects.

Europeana-  Digital library about the history and culture of Europe.

Digital Public Library of America- American history, culture, economics, SO MUCH AMERICA.

Internet Archive- In addition to books, they have music and videos, too.  Free!  And legal!  They also have the Wayback Machine, which lets you see webpages as they looked at a particular time.

College and Research Libraries- Library science and information studies.  Because that’s what I do.

Library of Congress Digital Collections- American history and culture, historic newspapers, sound recordings, photographs, and a ton of other neat stuff.

LSE Digital Library- London history, women’s history.

Wiley Open Access- Science things!  Neurology, medicine, chemistry, ecology, engineering, food science, biology, psychology, veterinary medicine.

SpringerOpen-  Mainly STEM journals, looooong list.

After tens of millions of students learned their first Hour of Code in December, how many have kept learning? Lots, actually!

Code.org’s online learning platform Code Studio just passed 5 million students enrolled, together with almost 115,000 teachers around the world!

10,000 new teachers are signing up to teach introductory CS with Code Studio every month. 10,000 new students are enrolling in courses every day!

Increasing diversity by starting young

At a time when US universities graduate 8,000 female computer scientists per year, we’re seeing over 4,000 girls enroll to study on Code Studio per day. Overall enrollment on the platform is 43% girls — far more balanced than the typical computer science course.

Of course, an intro course is a long way from a university degree, but most girls never even try coding. These new students now have the opportunity to get inspired and delve deeper. 

To top it off:  10% of all elementary and middle school students across the United States are enrolled in an introductory computer science course on Code Studio. Together, we are changing the next generation of computer science. 

Start learning on Code Studio or tell your local school to start teaching it.

Guest post by Kiki Prottsman

Did you know that Walt Disney went bankrupt in 1923? J.K. Rowling was rejected 12 times before one publisher (grudgingly) agreed to claim Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Play-Doh was originally a wallpaper-cleaning compound.

Many of you have asked me what is the code that President Obama wrote: it was a single line of JavaScript: moveForward(100);

Today, we’re finally ready to unveil an exclusive Hour of Code tutorial that we’ve been working on for months. Thanks to Disney Interactive, Code.org’s signature tutorial for the 2014 Hour of Code features Disney Infinity versions of Disney’s “Frozen” heroines Anna and Elsa!