Your first hour, and your first class.

Open it, then put it on your home screen

Open the Academy in any browser. On a phone, use "Add to Home Screen"; on a computer, use "Install". It then opens like any other app, full screen, and keeps working when the signal does not.

Type your first name

That is the whole sign-up. No email address, no password, no card. The name is used to greet you and to print your certificates. If a teacher has given you a class code, tap "Join my class" and type the code with your name instead.

Start at Phase 1, wherever you are starting from

Phase 1 is what a computer is, what a mouse does, and how a file differs from a folder. If that is already familiar it will take you an afternoon; if it is not, nothing later assumes you skipped it. Every idea arrives as something you already know before it is given its real name.

Work through the five beats of a lesson

Every lesson runs the same way, so you always know where you are: read it, watch it happen, do it yourself, answer the quick check, then prove it on a real server.

• The check at the end is not marked and not recorded. It is there so you find out now, not later.
• Read-aloud is in the top bar, in English, French or Pidgin.

Press the button and watch a real database move

A genuine PostgreSQL runs inside the app, on your own device. When a lesson says an un-vacuumed table grows four times too big, you do not have to believe it: you run the update, press the button, and watch your own copy go from 104 kB to 400 kB. Real Python runs the same way, and the terminal lets you type real Linux and Windows commands where nothing can break.

Pass the quiz at 80 percent to open the next phase

A phase unlocks only when its lessons are finished and its quiz is passed at 80 percent. Search finds only what you have already unlocked, so the app never hands you an answer you have not earned. You can retake a quiz as often as you like.

Already a DBA? Open Fast Track, pick Oracle, SQL Server or MySQL, and you get the map across to PostgreSQL plus the places your instincts will be wrong. Pass the placement test and the Postgres phases open straight away.

Make it work with no internet at all

Open My Progress and find "Working without the internet". It shows whether the real PostgreSQL and the real Python are on this device yet, and one button fetches them. Do this on wifi before you need it, and the whole app, engines included, runs with the signal off.

Teachers: create the class

In the Admin page, open Classes and create one. Give it a name and choose a PIN of at least four characters. You get back a class code and that PIN. The class code is for the pupils; the PIN is yours alone and is what opens the roster.

• Hand the teacher both. Give the pupils only the class code.

Teachers: write one code on the board

That is the whole enrolment. Each pupil taps "Join my class", types the code and their first name, and they are in. No pupil ever needs an email address, which matters when your pupils are children. A pupil who returns on a second device with the same name keeps the same work rather than starting again.

Teachers: follow the class, and teach from the front

Open My Class, type the class code and your PIN, and you get a read-only roster: who has started, who is stuck, who is flying, with the ones who need you at the top. You can see their work; you cannot change it.

Turn on lecture mode to teach from the front. It sizes the type for the back row, unlocks the whole course so you can show anything out of order, and records nothing against anybody while you demonstrate.