Build a real application with AI. In six weeks.
Students who can build with AI have a real advantage in college, internships, and careers. As the use of AI redefines the corporate landscape, those who make the cut understand how to use AI to accelerate their work. Deploy Academy sets students apart by teaching them the skills to understand what they are capable of building so they can add value to any endeavor.
Over six Saturday sessions (10:00 to 11:30 am), you'll go from idea to deployed application using the same AI tools professionals use, with hands-on guidance in a small group setting. You'll leave with a working demo that you can showcase in college applications and job interviews, and the skills to jumpstart your trajectory as a student, builder, or founder.
Parents join for this session. We'll create accounts, walk through parental controls and safety together, and get your tools installed and working. You'll leave with everything set up and ready to start building next week.
Concept: How your tools actually workWe'll figure out what you're building and cut it down to something you can actually finish in five weeks. Then you start on your core feature.
Concept: How to break a problem downAI can get things wrong. This week is about learning how to catch it.
Concept: Evaluate output criticallyMidpoint check: is your scope right for two more weeks? We'll adjust if needed, then build. The focus today is user-facing polish and peer feedback.
We'll clean things up and focus on how to share what you built: walking someone through it in person, putting it on GitHub, and writing about it for a college application or resume.
Concept: Tell the story of what you builtParents are invited. Everyone will present a working demo of their product.
Here are some examples of what you can build.
Drop blocks to build the highest tower. Miss and your platform shrinks. How high can you go?
Open Demo →Season stats, game results, and player leaders for the 2025 Denver Broncos.
Open Demo →Answer 5 questions about your mood and taste, get a personalized movie recommendation.
Open Demo →
I'm Ryjul Stokes. I have a PhD and have taught university courses to over 1,000 students. I started Deploy Academy because I believe every student deserves to know what they're capable of building (it's more than you think!).
A few things to know before signing up. If anything here isn't clear, reach out.
The instruction is free. The tool is not.
Students build using Codex, professional software that runs on a ChatGPT account. Roughly $40 total across the two months. Cancel any time.
Unlikely, but worth knowing how it works.
The $20/month plan includes a set amount of usage. When it runs out, the tool stops until the limit resets, usually a few hours. Nothing is charged automatically beyond the subscription.
There is an option to buy extra usage if you want to keep going before the reset. That is a deliberate purchase, not something that happens on its own. If you'd rather your student never have that option, tell me and I'll help you turn it off.
For a six-week class building small projects, I expect the base plan to be enough.
ChatGPT has built-in parental controls, and I'd encourage you to use them. You link your own account to your student's, which lets you manage settings and receive a safety notification in limited situations. One thing worth knowing up front: linking does not let you read your student's conversations. OpenAI designed it that way.
We'll go through all of it together in the first session, in person. You'll set it up in the room with me there. No prior familiarity assumed.
I don't create, own, or administer your student's ChatGPT account. I never have access to it, and I don't store any of their conversations.
In the room, I'm looking over shoulders and helping with builds, the same as any teacher. The project itself lives on your student's laptop and, once we deploy it, on a public web page you can visit any time.
No.
The course is about building something and understanding it. A student who can't explain what their code does can't demo it, can't answer questions about it, and can't fix it when it breaks. Week 3 is entirely about catching the AI's mistakes, because it makes them constantly.
The skill being taught is judgment: knowing what to ask for, reading what comes back, and being able to tell the difference between working and looking like it works.
No. The course is built for that, and the first cohort is small enough that I'm working with each student individually most of the time.
The application asks about experience level so I can plan, not to screen anyone out.
A working application, deployed to a public URL they can send to anyone. The source code on their GitHub profile. And a written description of what they built, plus a demo they've practiced giving, ready for a college application or resume.
The AI tool here is a coding assistant, not a chatbot companion. Students use it to write and edit files in a project folder.
Every student agrees to the acceptable use policy when applying, and we go over it together in the first session along with parental controls and settings.
Week 1 is for setup and for going over parental controls and safety, so I'd ask you to be there. Weeks 2 through 5 are drop-off. The final session is demo day, where students present to parents.
You'll get a short email after every session: what we covered, what your student worked on, and what's next. Their project is also live on a public web page from Week 2 onward, so you can open it any time and watch it change.
The pilot is free because it's the first one and I'm learning from it. In exchange, families agree to a few things.
Let me use the demos. Your student's finished project may be used in future marketing materials.
Write a review. A few sentences at the end, which may be used in future marketing materials.
Fill out the feedback survey. Short, at the end of the program. Your feedback will help me continue to create a great experience for students.
You can reach me at ryjul@deploy.academy.
Deploy Academy does not create, own, or administer accounts for students. Software accounts used in this program are created and owned by the student or their family. Deploy Academy does not collect or store student conversation data.
These are designed to keep everyone safe. We'll go over them again in the first session.
These apply to every student, in the room and between sessions, whenever you're working on your Deploy Academy project.
The free pilot is open to a limited number of students in grades 10-12 in the Boulder area. Six Saturday sessions, September 12 through October 17, 10:00 to 11:30 am.