Parents' guide:
Helping your child succeed at 
Hackingtons
Helping your child succeed at
Hackingtons
Hackingtons
We want your child to learn professional-level coding skills and build the confidence to take-on any challenge a career in technology may require.
Along the way, we want your child to build a professional portfolio, and fill their bedroom-shelf with awards earned at Hackingtons.
We are here to help your child succeed. And more specifically, we want to empower your child to:
And the first step is to contact us for a Free Trial Class, if you haven't already.
Prior to your child's class, you should receive an email with a username/password to our curriculum system: www.hackingtons.io. If you have any trouble logging-in, contact [email protected].
We encourage your child to login and explore the website prior to attending class.
The trial class is held during an actual class session (70min). Your child will be sitting amongst classmates, with a student teacher ratio of 6:1. Your child will then choose to build either a basic website, python script, or video game in Scratch.
At the end of the class session, your child's project will be showcased to everyone in class.
For each programming language taught, we offer a complete black-belt progression of rankings. Students can choose to focus on a single language, or do multiple languages at once.
For advanced students, we unlock our advanced lessons in Unity, JavaScript, and Game Development.
Your child's showcase is an ongoing record of their progress. Projects posted can be marked "public/private" depending on whether your child wants them to be visible to other students.
As a parent, you can stay up-to-date with your child's progress by viewing their showcase. To view from any device (without needing to login), visit the following website address:
www.hackingtons.io/myshowcase/UserName
note: UserName must be your child's username.
All Hackingtons students have a public portfolio that can be used to show-off their best projects. Initially, this portfolio is empty, and will need to be customized by your child. To view or share your child's portfolio, visit:
www.hackingtons.io/profile/USERNAME
Note: you must replace USERNAME with your child's actual username.
Our curriculum and help-system is available to kids 24/7, and we expect your child to practice coding from home.
Important: Our curriculum (hackingtons.io) uses a different username/password than Scratch or Replit- see below:
Scratch- Your child will need to create their own username/password at home. You will find a quick link to join scratch inside the 'white belt' Scratch lesson.
HTML/CSS/JavaScript- We use Replit.com (an online text-editor) for building websites. Your child will need to create their own username/password at home. (You will find a quick link to join Replit.com inside the 'white belt' of the HTML lesson.
Python- We use Replit.com (an online text-editor) for coding Python. Your child will need to create their own username/password at home. (You will find a quick link to join Replit.com inside the 'white belt' of the Python lesson.
Why use Replit?
Replit creates an instant, professional-grade coding environment and it is the current standard in the educational industry. As students progress, we introduce them to Visual Studio Code, which is the most popular (offline) coding editor; however, it doesn't work on Chromebooks, and projects are not easily shareable.
We provide a messaging system for contacting teachers from home. Our teachers typically check the system regularly, between the hours of 3pm-7pm.
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Important: You must also do step #2 too!
Your child must first press the "share" button inside the Scratch editor. This is an orange button that only appears if your child is logged-in to Scratch.
Our teachers can not see your shared Scratch game unless your post a link in either the Hackingtons showcase or the "ask for help" section.
Both the showcase and the messaging system have an 'easy' search feature for submitting your game link, shown below:
Copy the URL website address from the Replit page as shown below.
Open the showcase in Hackingtons.io, and select HTML, JavaScript, or Python to paste a link to your project.
All students, regardless of coding experience or ranking, are invited to compete for trophies in our monthly coding competitions.
Competition themes/programming languages rotate each month.
Most competitions are held on-line, but we do have in-person competitions and hackathons (ie the Hackingtons 500).
We award ~10 trophies each month, and we do our best to give everyone an opportunity to win (for example, our startup competition is less focused on coding ability, and more on creativity).
