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, I do charge a small amount for the additional teacher tools so that they can continue to be supported, developed and maintained. I am currently building the site and will be launching shortly...

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. I've got lots of plans for the site going forward and looking forward to bringing more projects, assignments and features as the site grows, so watch this space!