Pixar in a Box: Collaboration Between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy | Hacker News Reader

Pixar in a Box: Collaboration Between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy

khanacademy.org

129 pointsselvan13 comments

Huh, I haven’t looked at khan academy in years. They have a giant funding request box up now. I thought Bill Gates used to help fund khan academy. Am I remembering wrong, or did that end?

Khan Academy is a non-profit. Like any non-profit, they're always fundraising.

You mean, like any organization, they are always fundraising?

I work with 4th-9th grade girls teaching them code, and recommend this to them to work on over the summer! It's a great curriculum and does an awesome job pulling children in!

Does it require proprietary tools? Would like to use Linux and possibly Blender, but classes at school often use whatever big-tech tools they cut a backroom deal for.

Even if you aren't taking these classes, you can sign up for a free non-commercial license for Render Man. It comes with the full feature-set of the commercial version and there aren't any academic attendance requirements. While Renderman can also be installed on Linux, I can't personally vouch for feature parity with the Windows version as I haven't made the comparison myself.

Nuke also has a hobbyist license. No watermarking or end date, but there are limitations on output.

https://renderman.pixar.com/install

https://www.foundry.com/products/nuke-family/non-commercial

Would be great to have a recommended age range. I can't figure out from any of the text if this is more for me or my kids :-)

I watched the welcome vid to try working out if it's suitable for my pre-teen. The welcome vid is! Based on this, I suspect some of the content will go over their head, but I'm going to try them with it and see where we get. If it turns into a family project with me learning + teaching alongside my kid (or doing the bits they can't manage yet), that'd actually be a bonus.

I've done this course and I'd say it's a high school level course. Maybe a superstar 7th or 8th grader could do this on their own but I think that would be a stretch because there's some "advanced" math involved in the exercises. It's explained pretty well but it definitely assumes you have a basic understanding of geometry.

I just downloaded Khan academy kids on my iPad for my daughter to try out. Since it’s apparently completely free.

Are you unfamiliar with Khan academy? I thought it was pretty famous.

Free, high-quality lessons/education is pretty much their mission statement.

Well-kept non-secret.

Got me through many classes at various levels — tell your kids about Khan Academy!

Haha I heard about Khan Academy but not the kids version.

Daughter is obsessed with it at the moment. She keeps asking for iPad and I only let her play for 1 hour a day.

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