Education Ecosystem Blog

Many years ago, when we were a lot smaller and squeakier than we are today, we faced a shared experience. Parents returned home from work, and in their hands they held a small red (or blue) cartridge that was to simultaneously blow more young minds than Shane’s shotgun during a particularly morbid episode of the Walking Dead. On this cartridge lived adventure, hardship and a new kind of friendship that many of us hadn’t experienced beyond the family dog; That very same chunk of plastic and soldering contained… Pokémon Red (or Blue).

The game brought around a revolution in our social interaction – people traded cards, talked shop over the school water fountain and bartered away their rarer assets in shady and whispered deals behind the bike shed. Rumours circulated that second grader Sandy Smith had pawned his grandmother’s engagement ring to pay the mounting debts brought on by his expensive Shiny habit. Playtime was spent discussing playtime: A snatched ten minutes under the covers after bedtime, a quick journey to Victory Road over breakfast. It’s hard to describe how massive an impact the game had on the entertainment industry, and recently it broke records again as 1.2 million people gathered to share a joint game of Pokémon Red (not Blue), on Twitch.tv.

_{Twitch Plays Pokémon}

Twitch.tv, like Pokémon, is another phenomenon that has burst into the collective minds of young people everywhere with more aplomb than Sylvester Stallone slurping down a glass of egg whites.

While Pokémon had revolutionised the way we played games alone, it took another serious leap forward to bring us the next step in the entertainment revolution – live streaming of games and collective play. The community has been knitted together in a way never before seen, and the world is beginning to recognise that this isn’t just some underground movement that can be brushed aside as unimportant; During peak times, Twitch is the fourth biggest source of internet traffic in the USA, only falling behind behemoths Netflix, Google and Apple. Twitch is at the forefront of a massive new industry that is combining the best of streaming and entertainment to bring like-minded people together across the globe.

Twitch saw the way that we communally gamed – first on Mario Party in small groups that were friends when the game started and had entered into lifelong blood feuds by the end – second on Xbox Live, when we came together across the globe to teabag each other on Halo 3. World of Warcraft brought us raiding and levels of co-operation unseen before. The next step needed to be a big one, and Twitch provided it. 120,000 people playing one game, simultaneously, together, was proof of that. And so it falls to us to wonder… where next for the streaming experience that has changed the world of entertainment?

Well, as with all revolutions, after the initial rush of new power into the hands of the great unwashed, (a fitting term considering the length of time of some speedrunning sessions) a wiser head proposes a way to channel the new status quo in such a way as to be of real benefit to the people: Enter Livecoding.tv.

_{The Livecodingtv experience}

Twitch has transformed the gaming community by marrying it with the coquettish young debutant of livestreaming, the geisha of the internet revolution. Such a jewel cannot go unnoticed without covetous eyes turning on it, however… and so Livecodingtv put on its best electric blue suit and paisley cravat and asked her out to prom. Entertainment has changed as a result of Twitchtv, and now its time for us to make the same steps forward with online education.

Livecoding.tv is a unique new streaming platform that takes the best from its predecessor and applies it to online learning. In a completely original new take on the established system, Livecodingtv allows proficient coders to join streams where experts code while they watch. Many people who decided to learn to code online have become frustrated at a lack of supervision when learning, a gulf between the lessons and practical application and a difficulty in finding a virtual resource that allows them to push their coding on to the next level. Livecodingtv solves all those problems with a single click of the fingers (on a mouse, hehe… I’m sorry. That wasn’t great. I’ll show myself out.), as you are literally watching someone code in front of you and can interact with and question them as you go. Where Twitch brought us progress before across the field of gaming and entertainment, now Livecoding steps up to the plate to move us forward in an area more important now as a life skill than ever before.

To paraphrase ‘Stepbrothers’… You’ve had the old bull; Now try the young calf.

_{Chat directly to the coder as they livestream to you!}

Livecodingtv is the next step in the biggest collective movement of the 21st century, grabbing the baton from Twitch and looking to build with unique innovation on the good work that’s come before. For anyone looking to push their coding to the next level, it’s by far the best option available. Not only does it offer a learning experience very different to any other site out there trying to improve your coding, it’s also fun. You can get on a livestream and shoot the breeze with your friends, or go onto a public channel and kill some time watching someone build something interesting and talking to like-minded people in the livechat.

Coders love to chat about coding, they love to weigh up the pros and cons of different programming languages and discuss the best way to build a product. Unfortunately, there’s never been a proper hub, a proper center, dedicated purely to coding and the social aspect that comes with it. Livecodingtv isn’t some message board where you debate the benefits of Python and both come away thinking exactly the same thing as before; Now you can hash it out using different programming languages while you livestream to each other and see who gets the best results. You can watch someone code in a way that pushes you, and challenges you, and that’s what Livecodingtv is all about. A new, social experience for people who love to code.

New interactions, endeavour and challenges awaited us when we slotted that small red (or blue) cartridge into Gameboys that looked more like concrete that consoles… For anyone looking for the same experience in programming, Livecoding.tv would be a safe bet.