Google I/O is an exciting place to be and announcements keep rolling out, like the new Android Pay. Senior Vice President of Products, Sundar Pichai, announced that Udacity will now offer an Android Developer Nanodegree. Udacity said that the degree would take six to nine months to complete at a cost of $200 per month. Udacity already offers other classes on Android Development, but this is the first Nanodegree that Google has developed. It will cover everything from the basic fundamentals to their new Material Design. If you are already well versed as a current Android Developer, the new Android M Developer Preview is now available from Google.
Udacity is a for-profit educational organization that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs). While it originally offered university style courses, it now focuses more on vocational courses for the professional. It is an outgrowth of free computer courses offered in 2011 through Sanford University. The idea behind the Nanodegree programs is to master new skills through a series of online course and projects. The Nanodegree programs currently offered, include ‘Front-End Web Developer,’ ‘Data Analyst,’ ‘IOS Developer,’ ‘Full-Stack Developer,’ ‘Introduction to Programming’ and the new ‘Android Developer’ class. Udacity has designed the courses to be compact and flexible, for those busy working people and can be completed in as little as six months and as long as a year – you work at your own pace. You experience real hands-on learning while working with real-life projects. Your community of students and coaches are always available to offer the guidance and support you need. By the time you finish, you will have built a portfolio of projects that demonstrate the skills you learned.
The Nanodegrees courses offered for the Android Developer degree are, ‘Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals,’ ‘Advanced Android App Development: Productionize and Publish your App,’ ‘Gradle for Android and Java: Build better Apps Through Automation,’ ‘Google Play Services: Use Google APIs to Improve Your Apps,’ ‘Android Design for Developers: Make your Apps Material’ and ‘Android Ubiquitous Computing: Extend Apps to Wearables, TV and Auto.’
This Nanodegree will take you down the path from an intermediate developer with little or no experience with Mobile platforms to finish up as an Android Developer. By the time you finish your Nanodegree, you will have that diverse portfolio of projects to show future employers…and you will even publish your own app in the Google Play Store as part of the Capstone project. You are expected to have prior experience building applications in Java or another programming language, as this is an intermediate degree.