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Comment by Caleb_Smith | Hacker News Reader

I have been teaching a Python course at my local jail M-F for over a year now, and something we have struggled with is finding potential internships or general employment for our students when they are released. We typically recommend our students to enter the local community college system, but we also have some students that are utterly brilliant and could succeed without a formal education.

Does anyone have any insight for how we should approach companies on their behalf? Is it more beneficial to teach web development (it seems like this is an easier way to break into the industry)?

I am also interested in hearing any opinions on how we should approach teaching in the setting where there is no internet access and the typical mathematics level is algebra.

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> [...] how we should approach teaching in the setting where there is no internet access

Here is a link to a learning platform that is specially designed for the offline setting: https://learningequality.org/kolibri/ It can work both as a general purpose library (for self-directed learning) or as a LMS in a setting where there is someone who can "coach" the learners by monitoring their progress, organizing them into groups, and assigning specific lessons. In order for the content to work offline, it needs to be "packaged" as a Kolibri Channel (local copy of the content), then you can import it from a USB drive.

Another project in the localhost space is Kiwix-Serve: https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-serve/ Kiwix content comes in .zim files (~= zip with html+assets in it). You can download lots of .zim files available here: https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages In particular, the stackoverflow.com zim file (140GB) might be useful to have offline when learning to code.

Contributing to significant open source projects has been a path to success for many people I know.

I've never been incarcerated, but the open source path worked for me. But on the other hand, my family is well off enough that I could afford a year writing code for free. I'd imagine that most people getting out of prison need to earn a living right away.

Ok, so a company which facilitates open source contributions by prisoners, possibly giving them greater leverage in their parole hearings as well as post-incarceration career prospects? Does that sound like something worth doing to anyone here?

Please email me at alex@gatepay.co - would love to work something out if possible.

You should try reaching out to https://thelastmile.org/

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