If your imagination was caught by Pokemon Go, or your fingers have been itching to try out augmented reality development for even longer, then Google is your new guru. Google has recently announced that they will be offering the online course “Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore,” starting on July 16. The course will be on Coursera, a site offering hundreds of free online classes from renowned companies and universities. No experience is necessary, as this class starts with the fundamentals, with the birth of AR and how it relates to virtual reality. There is an emphasis, expectedly, on Google’s ARCore platform, but the course aims at giving all who register a thorough, basic understanding of AR.
As you might know, Syncfusion digs free educational materials. This Google course will be introducing other AR platforms like Google Poly and Unity, and if you want to learn the basics of making your own craze-inducing game with the latter, we’ve got you covered with Unity Game Development Succinctly. If you find yourself more drawn to the newer realm of mixed reality, HoloLens Succinctly covers the leading technology in the field.
Coursera itself is an excellent resource for learning new technology if textbooks make your eyes swim, or you find a deadline to be the motivation your lazy butt needs to peel you away from Netflix. Take anything from a cryptography course with Stanford University to an IoT course with IBM. If you can’t find an interesting topic there, the Open Education Database also collects thousands of free classes. You have to pay if you want credit for the class, but for those simply wishing to suck up some new knowledge, this is a way to do it at no cost.
MIT also offers access to its entire undergraduate and graduate coursework for free through its MIT OpenCourseWare program, along with newly-available recorded lectures. If the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isn’t your cup of tea, they have inspired hundreds of other universities to follow their lead, so check out your school of choice to see if it’s one of them.
For those wanting to deepen their Microsoft knowledge, the Microsoft Virtual Academy has free tutorials for a lot of its technology, including for game development, at different levels of expertise. You can also access free Microsoft-led classes and more on edX.org (I recommend filtering classes by Starting Soon, as they don’t take down archived or in-progress classes).
The Internet is full of free knowledge from reputable sources. If you take Google’s AR class or find something equally awesome, please share it with us in the comments section, so we can share it, too!