Free online school for developing applications for Windows 8

Friends, we are pleased to announce that from April 1, together with the National Open University Intuit, we are launching a free online school for developing applications for Windows 8. If you still do not know how to program for Windows 8, then this is exactly what will help you learn .

You can sign up for a training course here: aka.ms/w8school.

The course lasts 6 + 3 weeks and includes lectures, online consultations, laboratory and term papers. Lectures and consultations are conducted by Microsoft Russia employees (Department of Strategic Technologies).

Theoretical and practical part

The first part begins on April 1 (beginning of the course) and lasts 6 weeks (until May 12 inclusive). In the first part, every week:
1. A new block of lectures (video recordings) from Microsoft experts is uploaded
2. The next assignment for laboratory work is issued
3. A remote online consultation (Lync) is conducted with answers to questions

Lectures

Lectures are short video recordings (no more than 30) minutes on given topics, covering issues of design and development of applications for Windows 8 using HTML / JS or XAML / C #. Students can independently choose the most convenient programming language, or listen to lectures in both languages ​​at once.

Conventionally, the lectures are divided into 4 tracks:

1. General lectures (introduction to the topic)
2. Design
3. Development on XAML / C #
4. Development on HTML / JS

Laboratory works

During the laboratory work, each student needs to make a standard application (with the possibility of customization at his discretion), the work on which will help to understand the key aspects of creating and publishing a WinRT application for Windows 8. As a confirmation of independent work, each student should upload screenshots of the current state weekly applications and to get the final standings also lay out the final version of the application in the Windows Store.

A student who successfully attended a lecture course and posted the application in the Windows Store receives a virtual diploma of the course and can participate in the second part of the course.

Course lecturers

The course is read by the employees of the Russian office of Microsoft:

• Dmitry Soshnikov
• Stas Pavlov
• Sergey Pugachev
• Alena Gilevskaya
• Natalya Efimtseva
• Maria Anikina
• Konstantin Kichinsky

Course work

Coursework is an independent project of one or several students (no more than 3 people in one group) to create a unique application for Windows 8. Students can independently choose the direction and topic of their course work, hoping that it should be completed during the main course of lectures + 4 weeks (through June 9, inclusive).

After the end of the main course, starting on May 13, for students who successfully passed through the first part, individual consultations on design and application development with Microsoft experts will be organized (remotely or in person (Moscow)).

The output of the term paper should be an application published in the Windows Store no later than June 16. Students who successfully pass the term paper receive a virtual diploma on the successful completion of the online course and participate with their applications in the student work competition to receive the promotion of their applications from Microsoft. The winners are determined by the expert jury of Microsoft.

ps For us, this is also a big experiment :)