Arrington invests in Code Academy

I spotted the excellent Code Academy a few weeks ago. And it looks like I wasn’t alone. It’s received a huge round of funding including from Michael Arrington:

What really excites me about Codecademy is that you can learn almost anything this way.

All I can think of is how if this was around when I was in college I may have actually learned calculus this way. I got a B in that class but I can clearly remember at the time being completely lost, and anything I did learn is now permanently wiped from my brain.

It’s an interesting take on this form of learning and it looks like Code Academy is going to follow in the footsteps of Khan Academy et al in promoting learner led online instruction.

I think much like Khan Academy, this certainly has a place and is a fantastic resource for people to teach themselves some key concepts and basics until they’d inevitably be better off with a real teacher helping you out, setting challenges and interacting with other learners.  It’ll be interesting to see what comes from the ability for users to create their own Code Academy lessons.

What do you think?