Coding

GitHub Delivers Education Bundle

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/10/18

Just a couple of weeks after Microsoft announced that it was acquiring GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock, the platform launched a new bundle of its education tools for use by schools. GitHub is an open-source service that allows developers to share and collaborate on code. Some of the biggest tech companies in the world — including Microsoft — rely on GitHub as a way to connect with and to developers. The organization's tools have always been free to individual students and teachers; now schools can adopt those same offerings "in a single bundle."

GitHub Education, as it's called, provides access to:

• GitHub Classroom, which allows teachers to distribute assignments with starter code, automate creation of private repositories, manage access control and review progress;
• The GitHub Student Developer Pack, which gives access to a catalog of products that students might otherwise have to pay for;
• Training for instructors through the Campus Advisors program;
• Free "swag" for the classroom;
• Support in helping to grow technical communities within the school; and
• Free access to GitHub Enterprise and GitHub for Business.

So far, GitHub reported, its technology has been used by "more than one million students around the globe." Although the new bundle is intended for colleges, there's nothing about the application process that would prevent a K-12 school or district from applying for access too. To qualify, a school needs to issue degrees or certificates, offer GitHub to all of its technical departments, include the school logo on the GitHub education site, accept announcements from GitHub and appoint an administrator to go through teacher training.

On the higher education side, GitHub Education schools currently include Gallaudet University, Santa Barbara City College, St. Louis Community College and the University of New Hampshire.

On the K-12 side, GitHub is being picked up by teachers in Chagrin Falls, OH; the South Bronx in New York; and Naperville, Illinois. It's also used by Project Lead the Way, which provides STEM curriculum to K-12 students, uses GitHub in its computer science courses.

The application for the education program is available on the GitHub Education site.