Announce the launch of Skolar for the scikit-learn community

_posts/2025-06-30-probabl-skolar.md

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+---
+
+#### Post Information ####
+title: "Skolar: an open-source initiative to democratize open data science"
+date: June 30, 2025
+
+#### Post Category and Tags ####
+# Format in titlecase without dashes (Ex. "Open Source" instead of "open-source")
+categories:
+  - Updates
+tags:
+  - Sponsor
+  - Open Source
+  - Machine Learning
+
+#### Featured Image ####
+featured-image: BSD_watermark.svg
+
+#### Author Info ####
+# Can accomodate multiple authors
+# Add SQUARE Author Image to /assets/images/author_images/ folder
+postauthors:
+  - name: Skolar
+    website: https://skolar.probabl.ai/
+    image: "skolar-logo.png"
+  - name: Pénélope Gittos
+    website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gittospenelope-data-analyst-growth-bilingual/
+    image: "penelope_gittos.jpeg"
+---
+<div>
+  <img src="/assets/images/posts_images/{{ page.featured-image }}" alt="">
+  {% include postauthor.html %}
+</div>
+
+<span style="color:red">*This blog post has been submitted by Probabl, a sponsor of scikit-learn.* </span>
+The scikit-learn project values educational efforts that build and nurture a
+strong vibrant open-source community. The goal of this is straightforward: give
+everyone, everywhere, the tools they need to easily grasp, engage with, and
+meaningfully contribute to data science using open-source software. This mission
+is shared and actively supported by [Probabl](https://probabl.ai/), a company
+that helps maintain scikit-learn by employing many of its core contributors and
+investing in its long-term sustainability. With Probabl's support and a deep
+commitment from the community, the scikit-learn ecosystem continues building bridges between research,
+software, and education.
+
+When the [Inria scikit-learn MOOC](https://inria.github.io/scikit-learn-mooc/)
+(Massive Open Online Course) first went live, the community got a front-row seat
+to the amazing impact of practical, accessible and open learning. Created by
+several core developers and maintainers of scikit-learn—now working at
+Probabl—the MOOC has reached over 40,000 learners worldwide, clearly
+highlighting the demand for organized, hands-on resources that blend theory with
+real-world practice.
+
+Today, Probabl is excited to introduce
+[Skolar](https://app.arcade.software/share/vCN6ik9dR22zD35XP5a7), a new, fully
+open-source educational initiative, built directly from your feedback and all
+the lessons we've learned along the way. Developed and extended by those same
+core developers of scikit-learn, Skolar is designed specifically for data
+science practitioners, offering hands-on, high-quality learning resources
+grounded in real-world applications and open-source values.
+
+Skolar exists to boost our shared values: openness, teamwork, and practicality.
+It offers clear, interactive tutorials and structured courses carefully designed
+to match industry challenges and specialized use-cases. But even more
+importantly, it captures the true spirit of open source: encouraging
+collaboration, peer-to-peer learning, and guidance from experts.
+
+Right now, we’re just at the beginning. Today, you can dive into our
+Scikit-learn Associate Practitioner online course, adapted from the popular
+Inria MOOC but enhanced with new material on unsupervised learning, especially
+clustering.
+
+The next stages, professional and expert levels, will be released soon. We'll
+also add more courses covering other open-source libraries such as
+[skrub](https://skrub-data.org) (for data wrangling),
+[hazardous](https://soda-inria.github.io/hazardous/) (for survival analysis),
+and [fairlearn](https://fairlearn.org/) (for fairness).
+Additionally, our scikit-learn team is planning to create  industry-specific
+modules tackling real-world needs in fields like healthcare, finance, medicine,
+and beyond.
+
+At its core, Skolar is about empowering people through education, driven
+entirely by our passion for openness and collaboration. We firmly believe that
+true open data science begins with community-built learning resources. We warmly
+welcome you, whether you're a contributor, learner, teacher, or just someone
+curious, to join us. Help shape Skolar’s future and support open-source
+education in data science.
+
+Create your account on Skolar today: https://skolar.probabl.ai
+
+Contribute to the [scikit-learn course
+contents](https://github.com/probabl-ai/scikit-learn-course), or contribute to
+the learning platform's [backend](https://github.com/France-ioi/AlgoreaBackend)
+or [frontend](https://github.com/France-ioi/AlgoreaFrontend).