A Bit About GoCodeIt
I've been teaching Computer Science for over 20 years and worked in industry for 20 years prior to that. Since joining the teaching profession, I have become dismayed that despite huge advances in technology and the current digital age, access to good teaching tools that don't cost the earth is becoming more and more difficult. Although we all like 'free', nobody really minds when things aren't. We just want things to be affordable.
Budgets in schools are really very tight at the moment, so I found myself looking for a super low-cost platform that would make managing my students' programming work easier. I couldn't have been happier to have found not one, but two online coding platforms that seemed to offer amazing support for teachers and, unbelievably, would be offering this support FOREVER and for FREE! I dutifully set about spending months developing online exercises and courses, and for a while, it looked like all was well.
However, as many of you know, that first platform withdrew support for schools, and we were all left high and dry. We picked ourselves up and set about building courses over the coming months in the other platform that had also promised free forever. Well, we all know how the story goes… and once again, we were all left without anything affordable.
That's where Go Code It came in.
Having lost access to some great learning platforms, I decided it was time to develop my own… and here I am with Go Code It.
Although the large platforms were offering free, the truth is I would have paid for the service had they offered a cost-effective package for subscription. The school I teach at has nearly 1500 students studying Computer Science at one point or another. Per student licenses are simply not affordable. I wanted to develop a flexible online coding platform that was really light on the need for resources so that it gave a low-cost platform to help me teach the students in my classroom while being able to be sustainable for the long term.
The self marking programming problems section will always be free to use, so have a play around and see what you think. However, full disclosure… I do charge a small amount for the additional teacher tools so that they can continue to be supported, developed and maintained. Go Code It is available to teachers and schools and continues to grow with new features and improvements. I continue developing new features and enhancements regularly in my spare time.
The platform includes a complete back-end account system with everything teachers need for comprehensive student and class management. You can create custom programming projects, manage assignments, track student progress, review submissions, and support students with built-in scaffolds and feedback tools.
Go Code It also includes analytics and reporting features that help schools turn raw class activity into something useful for teaching decisions. Secure external API access can be used for server-to-server reporting workflows, including feeding data into Google Sheets through Apps Script, Power BI dashboards, or a school's own app.
Security and data protection matter as much as the teaching tools. The platform is built with secure school use in mind and includes GDPR-compliant handling of teacher and student data.
So that's it really, Go Code it, a low-cost platform that is available to any teacher who feels the same as I did. There is plenty more planned, and the platform will keep expanding with features developed from real teacher and school feedback.