Free Android Curriculum
Overview
This page aggregates free Android curriculums and resources available on the web.
Ana Redmond’s University of Washington Course
This course was developed by Ana Redmond, CEO of Infinut which provides educational apps for kids. She created a course which was run at University of Washington focused on teaching beginning Android development.
The course was broken up into eight lectures. Each lecture provides step-by-step instructions as labs for the concepts covered. Note that the course dates from the Eclipse ADT era of Android development, so treat it as a conceptual reference rather than a setup guide. Several of the original Google Drive documents (the setup guide, Lectures 2 and 3, and the supporting resources) are no longer publicly shared and now require sign-in, so their links have been removed below; the remaining lecture documents are still publicly viewable:
- Lecture 1 - First Android App
- Setup eclipse and android sdk (before lecture)
- First android application.
- Run, debug, test.
- Parts of an android project
- Background on Android ecosystem
- Java Review Slides
- Lecture 2 - Layouts and UI components (no longer publicly shared)
- Why layouts
- Linear layouts - weights, centering
- Text Field
- Drop down
- On/Off
- Buttons
- Relative layouts
- Lecture 3 - Interaction and lifecycle (no longer publicly shared)
- UI Event queue
- Callbacks - handling clicks
- Activity lifecycle
- Launching another activity
- Passing data between activities (bundles)
- Lecture 4 - Adapters
- Grid Layout
- List View
- Adapter for spinner
- Lecture 5 - Graphics
- Drawables
- Bitmaps - loading, resizing
- Matrix - translation, rotation
- Animation
- Sound - MediaManager and SoundPool
- Lecture 6 - Menus and Preferences
- Preferences
- Menus was covered by guest lecturer
- Lecture 7 - More interactions
- Touch
- Drag and Drop
- Keyboard input
- Gestures
- Multi-touch
- Lecture 8 - Threads
- Java threads overview
- Why threads? UI locking example
- Handler
- Async task
- Surface view
The Google Drive folder that originally hosted the full course content is no longer publicly shared.
Carolyn Dolnick’s Plan
Carolyn Dolnick from Lookout embarked on learning Android coming from a data background. The resources she used are listed below:
- Learn Java Well with Stanford CS 106A
- Learn about Git Version Control via the free Pro Git book (the free Udacity course this plan originally used, ud775, now redirects to Udacity’s paid catalog)
- Learn about Data Structures via Udemy Course
- Start with Google’s free Android Basics with Compose course (the free Udacity “Android Fundamentals” course this plan originally used, ud851, now redirects to a paid Udacity Nanodegree) and reference our getting started resources.
- Request free observer access to our CodePath Android Bootcamp by explaining what you’ve accomplished and supplying your GitHub handle. Build weekly apps assigned in the course.