In the New Year we want to experiment with helping students to develop technical skills outside of the "normal" ITP classes by leveraging some of the freely available resources on the web. 

We want to start with JavaScript because it is an important tool and one with great web tutorials on sites like Code Academy and Udacity. While these resources allow you to potentially learn JavaScript by yourself, doing so together at one time and place might give you the structure, "the second set of eyes", and the encouragement that will allow you to actually get it done! 

There will be light refreshments during the week and a small show of work at the end. This is free. There is no academic credit available for this but maybe a nice badge will be awarded. If it works well we will repeat it another time. 

While the syntax of JavaScript may be fairly specific, the applications are very diverse and we expect that, as is usual at ITP, most student will eventually be driven by a project idea. So we are going to run this as an un-conference (like ITP Camp) where people can post or request sessions about topics they would like to discuss or study. ITP will mobilize our network of experts to help with session ideas that the students can't run themselves. 

In the end this activity is mostly about setting aside time to teach yourself a new skill in the physical presence of people trying to do the same thing.