Course Guideline

1. Courses for younger students with little to no programming experience

   These are all visual programming languages where you drag and drop elements and connect them together to learn programming concepts.

   • Scratch - Create your own animation, story or game using this very popular visual programming language by MIT.
   • MIT App Inventor - Create Android mobile apps using the Blockly language created by Google.
   • Kodu - Create 3-D games using this software by Microsoft.
   • Minecraft Modding with Google's Blockly - Use the Blockly language to build Minecraft mods.

2. Courses for students ready to learn a traditional programming language

   We have an entire series of classes for each of these languages so you can work your way from the start and become an expert.

   • Python - Python is used in the real-world for building testing infrastructure, internal scripts, and standalone and web applications. It is also used by a number of high profile applications such as OpenStack, Dropbox and Blender.
   • Java - Java is one of the top languages used by enterprises for building large web applications and standalone applications. We offer Java Fundamentals and the Java 1xx series. Java 1xx is equivalent to what is being offered at a high school level course. It is more rigorous and will have homework that is expected to be completed each week. Java Fundamentals is for students who want to learn at a more casual pace. It takes a different approach by teaching fundamentals first, that is, learning programming constructs like loops and conditional statements before introducing objects.
   • JavaScript - JavaScript is fast becoming one of the most popular languages in use today. It is now also being used on the server side due to the rise of Node.js.
   • PHP - PHP is one of the most widely used languages and is primarily what Facebook and Yahoo used to develop their web site.
   • C# - C# was created by Microsoft and allows you to build applications that run on Windows .NET framework.

3. Courses for students interested in hardware and software

   • Raspberry Pi - Use this computer on a card to connect to the outside world with various sensors.
   • Arduino - Use this microcontroller to learn about electronics and connect to the outside world with various sensors.

4. Courses for students interested in Minecraft

   • Minecraft Game Design - Learn the ins and outs and behind-the-scenes of Minecraft. This is a great introduction and a start into programming and understanding what it takes to make a game.
   • Minecraft Modding with Google's Blockly - Use the Blockly visual programming language to create Minecraft mods.
   • Minecraft Modding with Java - Use Java to create Minecraft mods. Java is the language that Minecraft was written in.