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Free DataCamp Classrooms Now Available to Turkish Secondary Schools

Discover how two teachers helped bring DataCamp Classrooms to secondary schools in Turkey, all for free!
Mar 2023  · 4 min read

DataCamp Classrooms offers free access to DataCamp’s 410+ data science course library, industry-leading certification program, and much more to teachers and their students. All teachers need to do is apply and, once they’re approved, they can add as many students as they want.

Today, we’re happy to announce that Turkish secondary school teachers are now eligible to apply for DataCamp Classrooms!

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What does this mean? All Turkish educators and students over 16 can access DataCamp’s entire curriculum, for free. Teachers can apply to DataCamp Classrooms by submitting this form and providing a link to their faculty page or staff directory. DataCamp may request more information from the teacher via email, so applicants are encouraged to check their inboxes thoroughly to expedite the approval process. 

Once approved, teachers can invite all of their students over 16 into the group, thereby giving them access.

Attempting to grasp the current situation

Following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in southeast Türkiye on February 6, 2023, there has been an inconceivable level of disruption across all corners of Turkish society.

According to the UN, over 850,000 children remain displaced in Türkiye and Syria and over two million people have been forced to seek temporary shelter.

With unprecedented disasters, our regular focus—school, personal development, and passions—is replaced by an instinctive need to survive. The immediacy of needing to find somewhere to sleep, something to eat, locate lost loved ones, and protect your family erases all other priorities.

Specifically, access to education. 

Even if it doesn’t appear as an instant priority, a lack of stable educational resources creates a long-term societal deficit, especially for younger people. According to a 2020 study by Oxford, earthquake-affected children's test scores put them "one and a half to two years behind their peers in unaffected regions".

Prior to the earthquake, a DataCamp Classrooms initiative was already in motion to make DataCamp free for all educators and students in Türkiye. Now, we’re looking to integrate and expand free data science education in Türkiye as quickly and broadly as possible.

How two educators are helping all of Türkiye

DataCamp Classrooms for secondary schools is already available in countries where DataCamp has an office: Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Since then, we’ve expanded to Poland, Czechiya, Canada, Australia, and France.

Fast forward to January 2023. Several weeks prior to the earthquake, our social impact manager Nathaniel Taylor-Leach received an email from Gokay Batmaz, a secondary school teacher who reached out to DataCamp about bringing Classrooms to Turkish schools. 

To make this a reality, Gokay painstakingly collected and cleaned the email domains of every public and private secondary school in his country, and then shared the data necessary to fast-track DataCamp access. 

His dedication to enabling data education for potentially thousands of Turkish educators and students was encapsulated when he followed up with cleaned email data on February 6—the day of the initial earthquake struck. Alongside sharing all the email information which allowed us to initiate Classrooms in Türkiye, his email demonstrated the severity and immediacy of the disaster;

"Due to the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes in Türkiye today, education has been suspended in some schools at the moment…"

In the literal wake of the earthquake, Gokay’s commitment to pushing Classrooms through illustrates a monumental level of devotion to democratizing education. Secondly, as most schools officially moved online on February 20, access to digital learning platforms has only become more vital to minimize the impact on education.

Regarding the potential benefits of Classrooms for Turkish students, Gokay had this to say:

"I believe all the students will love using it, and I love the fact that it tracks their progress and makes it easy to assign and grade assignments. The platform's project and progress tracking features will be a game-changer for my students' programming journey.

Gokay Batmaz Information and Technology Secondary School Teacher, ENKA Schools, Istanbul 

Fast-tracking DataCamp Classrooms access

Using Gokay's information, we enlisted the help of Baruch College’s Ecem Basak, Assistant Professor at Baruch College, City University of New York, to explore how we could provide Classrooms to as many schools as possible. She initially reached out to us less than a week after the earthquakes struck because “I know DataCamp provides free access for those who need it.”

Ecem, who is also a Turkish immigrant, helped our social impact team audit the school websites provided by Gokay to determine that enough schools had open data on their employed teachers for our support team to verify their status—allowing us to bring forward the application process.

Ecem, who already uses DataCamp Classrooms as part of the curriculum, teaches at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, highlighted the flexibility of the program for her students:

DataCamp_Testimonial_Dark_16_9.png

To recap—what do teachers and students get with DataCamp Classrooms?

  • Unlock DataCamp’s entire data science curriculum, including 410+ interactive courses from novice to expert, from basic theory courses to prominent coding technologies like Python, SQL, R, and more
  • Data science projects using real-world data sets and scenarios that give students experience applying their new skills toward an end goal
  • An easy-to-use platform accessible all-in browser without ever having to download any software
  • Assignments and reporting tools to enhance your classroom management capabilities.  You’ll know exactly which of your students completed your assignments, and when. We’ll even show you the results of their Skill Assessments
  • High achievers can receive industry-leading Data Scientist and Data Analyst Certifications
  • DataCamp Workspace access—a collaborative IDE that lets teachers make custom assignments and enables students to share their portfolios of data-driven work.
  • The complete DataCamp app on iPhone and Android
  • All of this for free!

DataCamp Classrooms is an embodiment of our belief that data education is a basic human right

Everyone deserves education access, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or their current socio-economic state. For students and educators whose lives have been upended by war or any environmental or political disaster, DataCamp will continue to do all we can to expedite their free access. 

Teachers can reapply every six months to continue having access to our curriculum, give assignments, and prepare their students for higher education and the job market. What’s more, you don’t need a credit card to apply. Once approved, educators can invite all of their students to their accounts.

Building stronger bridges with Türkiye

It goes without saying we want to thank Gokay and Ecem have been central in activating DataCamp Classrooms across Türkiye. 

We’re still in the early stages, but our mission is to build on the initial access and ensure as many Turkish students get free data science education as possible. 

Thank you to all the teachers and students already using DataCamp Classrooms, for helping us spread free data science education on an international scale. Learn more and apply to DataCamp Classrooms or visit our FAQ if you have any questions.

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