Sunday, June 9, 2013

Review: Google Developers University

            Google Developers UniversityConsortium presents a fairly comprehensive and emergent education program for anyone looking to master web development or simply expand their skill set — comprehensive in outline at least. I get the sense that it is curricula compiled by an information management specialist giant, not composed by educators per se.

            The well-organized site lists quite a number of offerings in three general categories: mobile, web development, and programming languages. The programming languages track leaves much to be desired, but the other two tracks appear to lead from a fairly introductory “classes” to advanced real-world application. The offerings range from free online videos or slideshows to university courses with tuition, to live webinars from any number of organizations.
            The free stuff sometimes is little more than a slideshow with no voice over, which makes little sense without the lecture it was designed to accompany. But, there are still some gems. I have selected this course from the University of Maryland on building Android apps to browse over the summer.
          Also, though many courses start off at a very introductory level, none of these are designed to build your knowledge from the ground up like Codecademy does. So, what you get out of Google Developers University depends on what you can put into it.
            As a site (or, subsite), it is well-organized and interactive. There is a forum area for collaboration, questions etc. But, mainly the content is well-regulated, which is good. It seems to be a good place for universities to attract students with “cutting edge” offerings. Also, there are some pretty cool applications available for developing and educational collaboration.

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