Hey.
After spending the last eight months (and some late nights) learning, coding, more learning, and more coding, it is done! I have completed the Android Basics course offered by Udacity and Google!
This started at the beginning of the year with a Scholarship Challenge that was open to 50,000 applicants, where you could choose one of the four courses offered:
- Intro to HTML + CSS
- Offline Web Applications
- Android Basics
- Developing Android Apps.
These courses are three months, and you have the opportunity to qualify for a full Nanodegree scholarship, which I did.
The courses provide an online community led by Udacity Mentors and even student alumni, as well as support from your fellow students.
Some of the criteria for receiving the Nanodegree was not only successful completion of all the course work, but ample participation in the online community. And this was a much bigger challenge for me than the coursework.
As an introvert, I pretty much like to keep to myself, and it can be a challenge for me to open up to people. However, the urgency of this requirement, as well as knowing the material well enough to provide value to others allowed me to get over that hurdle. When Udacity notified me that I received the full scholarship, I was elated!
The full Nanodegree program itself is a collection of courses offered by Udacity, and was more challenging (and longer) than the first three months. You really have to make a schedule and stick to it to stay on track. The community is always there to assist you should you need it. And of course, you can provide assistance to others yourself as well.
While I already have some experience developing Android apps, I’m using Adobe AIR, which can shield you from the inner workings of how Android really works. This course helped me to get deeper into those underlying layers. While I have a better understanding of the development process, there is still much to learn. This Nanodegree program doesn’t go over every detail (it would take forever, heh), it does help teach you how to figure out things on your own. you don’t need to have all the answers up front; but knowing how to research them to find out is crucial to your success as an Android developer (or any type of developer for that matter).
During the course, I was also working on a side project as an additional challenge, using what I’ve learned from this program. It’s a game, of course (of course!). I should have it released later this year, so stay tuned for that!
Thanks to Google and Udacity for this incredible opportunity! I’m so glad I was able to participate in this!
– C. out.