Making coding more accessible
For 2018 we’re trying an experiment: we’ve changed our pricing model substantially and hopefully for the better. Previously we charged a flat rate; every student cost the same. This year we’ve introduced a new scheme that makes Grok cheaper with every subscription you purchase.
Here’s how it works:
Lets say that one class is 25 students. Your first class is full price, the second 5% off and the third 10% off. This trend continues, and it keeps getting cheaper. After 200 students you’re getting 60% off and once you hit 400 students every additional student is 100% discounted, totally free. That’s right, we have site licenses now!
What does this mean in practice? Well, where previously we found schools could justify paying for Grok for one grade, now it is much more feasible to buy Grok for a few grades or even the whole school. This means that more students can get access to our fantastic resources. More teachers can use them in class, and the future is full of more coders!
More students with Grok subscriptions means more opportunities to introduce coding in different classes or to mix more Grok into your existing technology curriculum. Check our pricing calculator to see how much Grok will cost you.
There’s lots more to Grok.
If you haven’t logged in to Grok in a while, you may not have seen all our new courses. Some of these created by the fantastic Australian Computing Academy, others developed in-house. With Grok available for more students, you’ll have many more opportunities to use these new courses, integrate them into more technology areas and hopefully across curricula boundaries.
Here’s a selection of some newer courses that you could use:
Intro to Databases (SQL)
This course introduces students to structured data, querying data, identifying information within that data and developing knowledge from data. It uses a series of interesting scientific, geographic, social, political, historic, and economic datasets. These include Australian threatened species, NSW Convicts, Olympic Medals, UNHCR movements of people, and international and national wage data. Through exploring these datasets students learn about data and computer science, but also a lot about the world around them and what kinds of information they can discover — if they look!
Digital Technologies Challenge: Chatbot
There are lots of different ways to explore language, but how do you explore language with code? The Australian Computing Academy have knocked it out of the park with this (curriculum aligned!) Digital Technologies Challenge. Students explore and create word games using Python (or Block coding) developing coding and language skills. Along the way they’ll build madlibs, taboo and develop their own projects. The final creative endeavour is a Pirate Chatbot! Yarrrrr!
BBC micro:bit Crash Course
The BBC micro:bit is taking the world by storm! It’s one of the best platforms we’ve seen for integrating embedded programming and robotics into your class. With our micro:bit course students use a familiar language, Python, to create a variety of interesting little projects (no micro:bit required!). Students will build an alarm, a musical chairs game, play music, develop a compass, make a dice roller, transmit morse code, and start a game show!
All this is just the beginning! We’ve got a lot of exciting new courses coming up this year, plus there’s always our entire catalogue of existing courses.
If you’re excited about the new pricing, give us a clap and tell your colleagues. Everyone can Grok now!
