

Online Learning Platzi (YC W15) Gives You Useful Tech Skills, Not Diplomas - freddier
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/20/platzi/

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freddier
Hey guys, I'm one of the founders of Platzi. We've done classes with
RethinkDB, YC partners, Sails.js/Treeline and Product Hunt. They're all free
right now and will be for a while.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

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simonebrunozzi
Do you know Cloudacademy.com / Codecademy.com / Teamtreehouse.com ? How would
you compare with them?

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freddier
I didn't know cloudacademy, cool.

We have livestreamed classes with industry pros. Among them, that I mentioned
on the parent comment. There's a lot of real-time collaboration among
students, like shared notes, questions and files.

But really, the live classes, those are our best feature.

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shk
I loved the startup class and sails js lectures. Looking forward to more in
the future.

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spiritplumber
I wonder if MOOCs will reduce credentialism, or strengthen its grip...

(If I hear "You don't have a phd, you can't be first author on this paper" one
more time, I'm getting the shark launcher)

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freddier
In the tech industry (design, marketing, programming) we're seeing that
companies don't care about credentials when they see an awesome portfolio.
Google VP of People Ops said they no longer care about GPAs [1]

On the other hand, one of our students from Spain managed to convince his
university to validate one of our courses as credits. So I don't know. But the
trend is towards projects > diplomas.

(However, for papers, that's gonna take a while)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-
ho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-
job-at-google.html)

~~~
mikermcneil
yeah that's truly incredible. If I'd spent the first two years of my
university education learning from a tool like Platzi, I'd be in an incredible
place. Can't wait for @freddier to redo the badass "intro to programming
course" in English so I can show it to a few folks I know who struggled to
adapt to formal CS education

