Coder is a simple, open platform and set of projects to teach the languages of the web using a Raspberry Pi and a web browser. It’s free to download on GitHub.

In the first month, the Coder site received ~200k visits and averages 175 downloads a day; well above the average for a typical open-sourced project, with 200 forks (new Coder-based projects) on Github. Coder was piloted for a 12-week “Webmakers” course at Howard University and in a variety of youth clubs, and is currently being developed for a Fall ’14 New York City pilot program.

The Maker movement is helping to bridge the gap between pure learning tools and professional engineering, getting kids interested in coding early. Raspberry Pi, a Linux computer made for education, is great at teaching how computers work and is popular in the Maker community. But what about making stuff for the web? The community is there, the hardware is there, the momentum is there. So we decided to bring the web to the makers.

The Coder platform and projects are targeted at middle-schoolers - the ages where students lose interest in computer science. The platform is free and accessible to all, with inexpensive hardware that is easily deployed - particularly into typically under-served educational and youth development programs. Anyone can try, learn, and play with coding for the web, without the expense and intimidation that usually comes with learning code from scratch.