Tag Archives: Android Study Jams

GDSC India’s Android Study Jams Boost Student Career Outcomes

Posted by Tanvi Somani, Program Manager - Regional Lead, Google Developer Student Clubs, Google Developer Relations India

photo of green Android logo

Android Study Jams, hosted by Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) chapters across the globe and in India, leverage peer-to-peer teaching to train a new generation of student Android developers. The program aims to help student developers build their careers and put them on a solid path towards earning an Associate Android Developers Certification. Three students from the GDSC community in India, Amsavarthan Lv, Rishi Balamurugan, and Sanjay S. went the extra kilometer to earn their certifications.

Meet the newly certified Android developers

“From childhood onward, I was inspired by my brother to learn to program. He’s also a certified Android developer,” says Amsavarthan Lv, the GDSC Lead at the Chennai Institute of Technology and a full-stack web and mobile developer. “I used to be amazed by seeing the code and information on his output screen. Over time, I started exploring tech, and I chose my career as a full-stack web and mobile developer.”

Rishi Balamurugan’s father introduced him to coding, and he eventually built an application for his dad's company. A member of GDSC Shiv Nadar University from Bangalore, Rishi was the facilitator for the Android Study Jams on his campus.

Sanjay S. mused he didn’t like technology at first, but a friend introduced him to Android with Java through an online course, which changed the course of his career. Now, he’s a pre-final-year engineering student, specializing in Android and full-stack development, at Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College - Coimbatore Tamil Nadu.

Photo of man in red shirt named Amsavarthan Lv Photo of man in plaid blue shirt named Rishi Balamurugan Photo of man in black and white checkered shirt named Sanjay S

(Pictured from left to right) Amsavarthan Lv, Rishi Balamurugan, and Sanjay S. each recently earned a certification in Android Development.

Leveling up Android development skills

These three newly certified Android developers completed the program with comprehensive Android development skills and the confidence and preparation to build a career in Android development.

“As an Android developer, I have taken several webinars and workshops through GDSC and other campus programs,” Amsavarthan says. “The course and the content provided in Android Study Jams was a piece of cake for getting started as an Android developer. It had everything from creating basic layouts to implementing a local database.”

“After learning the fundamentals, I heard about this certification and started to prepare,” says Sanjay. “I thought this would help me stand out in my career and boost my confidence.”

After receiving mentorship from the Google Play team on Google Play and Play Academy, the students built simple applications and learned what's involved to deploy to the Google Play Store.

  • YouTube Thumbnail Search App: A solution for users who just want to browse thumbnails and not play the videos shown in the YouTube search list, the application leverages LiveData and ViewModel to handle the UI Logic. Screenshots
  • SimplDo: This application keeps track of your todo list, with options to add, check, update, and delete items. List items are displayed using Recycler view and stored using View Model and Live Data; Jetpack navigation is used to handle navigation between the fragments and pass data. Screenshots
  • Alert'em: An emergency alerter with local helpline numbers, this app’s “Emergency Alerting System” sends an SMS containing the recent call log of the user to their emergency contacts. It uses a flexible constraint layout and a Jetpack Navigation to switch between different screens. Screenshots

Building confidence and career readiness

Open laptop with live Android Study Jam session on the screen

Over 65.5 thousand developers participated in 800+ Android Study Jams in India and emerged with new skills from the Android Basics in Kotlin Course and Appscale academy sessions. Program facilitators could earn Google Developer Profile badges and become Android Educators.

“Android Study Jams helped me to try out new libraries such as Jetpack, DataStore, and WorkManager and showed me how to work in a step-by-step manner,” says Sanjay. “It was organized in such a way that even a beginner can start learning Android easily.”

Amsavarthan, Rishi, and Sanjay took the initiative to gain the skills to pursue employment as full-time Android developers after graduation, and as the program continues, more Android Study Jams participants will be on their way to bright futures.

How to join a Google Developer Student Club and lead or attend an Android Study Jam:

  • If you’re a university student interested in opportunities to learn about Google developer products, including Android Study Jams, sign up for a Google Developer Student Club near you here.
  • Want to make a similar impact on your campus? Sign up to become a Google Developer Student Clubs Lead here.

Join the North America Android Study Jams to learn more about developing quality Android apps

Posted by Kübra Zengin, Program Manager

Android Study Jams Logo

Learning about Android development doesn’t mean you have to learn by yourself. Join fellow developers in your community and improve your skills by attending an Android Study Jam! Events are currently taking place across North America.

Android Study Jams are community events where developers come together to learn, create, and collaborate. Participants will follow guided codelabs designed to improve their development skills, all with an extra focus on improving the quality of applications.

These codelabs are created by the Android Developer Relations team at Google with three different tracks.

  1. Track one focuses on developers who are completely new to programming.
  2. Track two is for developers who are already experienced with Android development and are looking to take their skills to the next level.
  3. Track three is for advanced developers who want to learn about Modern Android Development: the Androids team’s recommended tools, APIs, and programming language to help developers more productively build better quality apps. This track will cover :
    • Jetpack Compose
    • Kotlin coroutines
    • Using Hilt and learning the importance of Dependency Injection
    • Advanced WorkManager
    • Advanced Testing Concepts
    • Jetpack Compose Basics

If you want to join an Android Study Jam, meet fellow developers, and learn alongside friends old and new, then check out this link to find an event!

Image with text saying Modern Android Development with 3 phones

Google Developer Student Clubs in India build Android Apps with Kotlin

Posted by Siddhant Agarwal, Google Developer Student Clubs India Community Manager and Biswajeet Mallik, Program Manager, Google Developers India

Google Developer Student Clubs recently hosted Android Study Jams, a collection of community-organized study groups, in 275 campuses across India. These study jams helped students build Android apps in the Kotlin programming language via a curriculum provided by Google.

These virtual events were attended by thousands of students in 250+ colleges and saw the creation of hundreds of new Android apps made with Kotlin. To celebrate all of this exciting work, we wanted to showcase some noteworthy apps built by the Android Study Jam session participants:

Stumate App

Android 12 logo

Developed by GDSC GMR Institute of Technology, Stumate is a place for students who are looking for a solution to store all of their files and notes in one organized place on their devices. This application also allows students to send notifications to their classmates about assignments while uploading notes in a PDF, Word Document or a Presentation.

The app uses the Material Design library for the front-end and Firebase as a backend. Some of the technical concepts used in the app include:

  1. SharedPreferences and RoomDatabase to store user credentials
  2. WorkManager to schedule the reminders at a particular time
  3. Data Binding to display the content
  4. Firebase Authentication (Google Single Sign On and Email Auth), Realtime Database, Storage, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Crashlytics
  5. Firebase Test Lab to test the application on various devices

You can find this app on the Play Store here.


Ask Me Anonymously App

Android 12 logo

Ask Me Anonymously is a chat application developed by GDSC Chandigarh University where users can ask questions to one another without revealing their identity.

This app uses concepts that were taught in Android Study Jams such as:

  1. RecyclerView
  2. Activity Lifecycle
  3. Data Binding
  4. Using Glide for loading and displaying images from the internet

The application also uses Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Cloud Storage for implementing the above-said functionality, it also uses some other notable Firebase features such as Cloud Messaging and Firebase Dynamic Links.

You can find this app on the Play Store here.

Travel Wise App

Android 12 logo

Developed by GDSC Indian Institute of Information Technology, Lucknow, Travel Wise is an app that helps users find co-travellers in their journey, allowing you to share your journey and save money on travelling.

The app uses Google Firebase for authentication and Realtime Database for storage.

Eye Tester App

Android 12 logo

In today's digital age, our screen time has dramatically increased, making eyesight problems more common. GDSC Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering developed an Eye Tester app, which tells whether one should visit a doctor or not based on a simple digital eye test.

The app uses the concept 'toast' which makes the text appear for a short period and disappear, and 'random' which generates random numbers. The app is designed using Compose’s 'constraint-layout' which gives the flexibility to design the UI of the app efficiently.

Taperback App

GDSC Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute developed Taperback, a book and novel reading Android app. In Taperback, users can read from a large collection of free books collected manually from already publicly available online websites. Books from these sites are then later uploaded to the Firebase Firestore and Storage using a custom made Web Portal, along with other metadata of the books. New books are often added daily.

This app was created using Kotlin and XML. Some of the key concepts used are Kotlin Coroutines, navigation graphs, RecyclerView, WebView, SQLite, data caching, and more.

We want to thank all the Android Study Jam facilitators for hosting these sessions and for helping students develop these exciting Android apps with Kotlin.

The Google Developer Student Clubs Community in India is now bringing their enthusiasm to the 2021 Solution Challenge, where they’re building apps that serve their local community.

Get started

Ready to start learning Kotlin and building your own Android apps? If you’re a university student, join a Google Developer Student Club near you. If you’re a professional, find the right Google Developer Group for you.

Students Learn Android App Development with Google Developer Student Clubs

Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs

Google Developer Student Clubs, a program of university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies, recently started hosting study groups called Android Study Jams. The goal? Learn Android app development through hands-on codelabs in an online curriculum provided by Google. There are two tracks: one for students who are new to programming, and one for those who already have experience. Interested in participating? Facilitator materials are available for anyone to host Android Study Jams in their community - take a look and get to building.

Google Developer Student Clubs are dedicated to helping students learn programming together, among peers, in a fun and interactive setting. While over 50 thousand students from all over the world have participated in these Android workshops, we wanted to highlight the exciting work from groups in Indonesia, Turkey, and Nigeria. From programming in Kotlin to building a series of apps, these students have put their minds to work.

Learn more about what these three clubs have been up to below.

Indonesia

(Image from UNPNVJ’s Android Study Jams where students are learning Kotlin)

Club members from Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta in Indonesia recently came together to host a virtual Android Study Jams session with over 60 students to learn the basics of building Android apps. Their student-run learning session covered several topics, including:

  • An introduction to developing for Android
  • An introduction to coding in the Kotlin programming language
  • A tutorial on setting up and working in Android Studio

After the students felt comfortable with the basics of Kotlin and Android Studio, they combined their new skills to create their own layouts for a birthday card app.

(Image of Birthday cake app)

We can’t wait to see what the students from UPNVJ build next on Android thanks to their new programming skills.

Turkey

(Image from Medipol University where Nelson Glauber is teaching students the basics of Android App Development)

Medipol University in Turkey also hosted their own Android Study Jams by organizing a livestream with over 500 participants. Nelson Glauber, who was the first Google Developer Expert for Android in Latin America, led the event and helped students learn more about topics like:

  • How to display text and images in an app
  • Adding a button to an app and making it interactive
  • Learning more programming concepts in Kotlin like classes, objects, and conditionals

After taking students’ questions, Nelson worked with them to build an interactive dice roller app that updates the screen after the results of a roll.

(Image of Dice Roller app)

Nigeria

The Google Developer Student Club at Kaduna State University in Nigeria tackled different codelabs and learning pathways in their Android Study Jams. In particular, the group worked on the following topics:

  • Adding an additional screen to an app
  • Learning how the Jetpack Navigation Component makes it easier to manage navigation in an app
  • Learning the best practices of app architecture

With these new skills, the group is now able to start working on building more advanced apps that allow users to navigate between multiple screens.

(Gif of Cupcake app)

How to join a Google Developer Student Club and Android Study Jams

If you’re a university student looking to learn more about programming alongside a community of your peers, sign up for a Google Developer Student Club near you here. As a part of the community, you’ll have access to special learning opportunities, including Android Study Jams, on many of Google’s developer products.

If you want to lead your own Android Study Jams or explore other free resources for learning Android development, click here.

Students Learn Android App Development with Google Developer Student Clubs

Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs

Google Developer Student Clubs, a program of university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies, recently started hosting study groups called Android Study Jams. The goal? Learn Android app development through hands-on codelabs in an online curriculum provided by Google. There are two tracks: one for students who are new to programming, and one for those who already have experience. Interested in participating? Facilitator materials are available for anyone to host Android Study Jams in their community - take a look and get to building.

Google Developer Student Clubs are dedicated to helping students learn programming together, among peers, in a fun and interactive setting. While over 50 thousand students from all over the world have participated in these Android workshops, we wanted to highlight the exciting work from groups in Indonesia, Turkey, and Nigeria. From programming in Kotlin to building a series of apps, these students have put their minds to work.

Learn more about what these three clubs have been up to below.

Indonesia

(Image from UNPNVJ’s Android Study Jams where students are learning Kotlin)

Club members from Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta in Indonesia recently came together to host a virtual Android Study Jams session with over 60 students to learn the basics of building Android apps. Their student-run learning session covered several topics, including:

  • An introduction to developing for Android
  • An introduction to coding in the Kotlin programming language
  • A tutorial on setting up and working in Android Studio

After the students felt comfortable with the basics of Kotlin and Android Studio, they combined their new skills to create their own layouts for a birthday card app.

(Image of Birthday cake app)

We can’t wait to see what the students from UPNVJ build next on Android thanks to their new programming skills.

Turkey

(Image from Medipol University where Nelson Glauber is teaching students the basics of Android App Development)

Medipol University in Turkey also hosted their own Android Study Jams by organizing a livestream with over 500 participants. Nelson Glauber, who was the first Google Developer Expert for Android in Latin America, led the event and helped students learn more about topics like:

  • How to display text and images in an app
  • Adding a button to an app and making it interactive
  • Learning more programming concepts in Kotlin like classes, objects, and conditionals

After taking students’ questions, Nelson worked with them to build an interactive dice roller app that updates the screen after the results of a roll.

(Image of Dice Roller app)

Nigeria

The Google Developer Student Club at Kaduna State University in Nigeria tackled different codelabs and learning pathways in their Android Study Jams. In particular, the group worked on the following topics:

  • Adding an additional screen to an app
  • Learning how the Jetpack Navigation Component makes it easier to manage navigation in an app
  • Learning the best practices of app architecture

With these new skills, the group is now able to start working on building more advanced apps that allow users to navigate between multiple screens.

(Gif of Cupcake app)

How to join a Google Developer Student Club and Android Study Jams

If you’re a university student looking to learn more about programming alongside a community of your peers, sign up for a Google Developer Student Club near you here. As a part of the community, you’ll have access to special learning opportunities, including Android Study Jams, on many of Google’s developer products.

If you want to lead your own Android Study Jams or explore other free resources for learning Android development, click here.

New curriculum for educators to teach Android app development

Posted by Kat Kuan, Developer Advocate, Android

We strive to make Android development content accessible to all, so that anyone can become an Android developer. Over the years, millions of students at all different levels have consumed our learning content and worked through courses and codelabs to advance their skills. We continue to update and release new content as the ever-changing industry continues to evolve.

As demand for skilled Android developers increases in the job marketplace, there is an even greater need for educators to train the next generation of Android developers. That is why we created these resources to help support and empower educators.

New Android Development with Kotlin instructor-led curriculum

Today we’re announcing the launch of our new instructor-led curriculum for Android Development with Kotlin. This is for classroom learning (virtual or in-person) with an instructor delivering lectures on important Android concepts, and students receiving hands-on practice through codelabs. The official course materials are now available and can be freely modified by instructors to adapt to their students’ needs.

This is a major update to the curriculum we released in 2018. The updates account for the most recent changes in the Android platform, from the release of the Android Jetpack libraries to Android development becoming Kotlin-first. The Kotlin programming language helps developers become more productive with more concise syntax and improved code safety. Over 60% of professional Android developers already use Kotlin, and it’s Google’s recommended programming language for new developers building Android apps. While instructors do not need Android or Kotlin experience to teach the curriculum, prior programming experience is recommended.

We’ve partnered with universities and skilling partners in India such as Shivaji University, I. K. Gujral Punjab Technical University, Chandigarh University, Ganpat University, Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK), and Information and Communication Technology Academy of Kerala, who will be some of the first to offer this curriculum to their students in the Spring, with more universities to follow in the Fall and coming semesters. With the curriculum now available publicly, educators are welcome to start teaching Android development.

“As it’s mostly a hands-on course, students learn implementations which helps them in their placements in Mobile app companies.” -Dr. Kavita S. Oza, Shivaji University

Android Study Jams content now available for all developers

Outside a formal classroom, learning in a peer group has also been shown as an effective way to learn Android. That is why we’re also making the Android Study Jams program available to all developers today. Android Study Jams enables a group of people to come together and learn Android development through hands-on codelabs in an online curriculum. An instructor is not needed to deliver lectures, but it is recommended to have a facilitator to organize the group meetings. No programming experience is needed to get started. Over 38,000 students in Google Developer Student Clubs around the globe have already participated in this program.

“Introducing people to Kotlin and being by their side at this first step which could touch their lives created great happiness and excitement for us.” - Ceren Tunay and Serkan Alc, Developer Student Club Turkey

With many paths to learning, it is always interesting to see the different journeys of students who become Android developers, and exciting to see the resulting personal success, innovative apps, and entrepreneurial pursuits they have. The following video highlights two developers and how learning Android development has shaped their careers.

For more details on these new offerings, check out the Android Development Resources for Educators.

For independent learners, we also offer self-paced learning content, Udacity courses and Nanodegrees, YouTube videos, and more resources on developer.android.com. Keep us posted on how your learning journey goes!