New free courses at the Microsoft Virtual Academy, December 2015

Today we have prepared for you a pre-holiday review of free courses at the Microsoft MVA Virtual Academy . As before, new materials from Microsoft experts continue to be released in order to benefit IT professionals and software developers.

Hit! How to teach a child to program A
long-awaited and unusual course examines many Microsoft technologies (and not only) that can help you take your child into computers and programming. Without pretending to be methodological comprehensive and an exhaustive story about technology, this course gives the right links and ideas, thanks to which you can spend many hours with your child at the computer, studying and creating with him.

New!Introduction to Microsoft Azure Cloud for Students and Schoolchildren
Video materials are intended for students and schoolchildren who want to make maximum use of the cloud offerings within the DreamSpark / Imagine Access program. It tells how to access the Azure portal, how to deploy your site based on a content management system, and how to start developing your sites from scratch based on bootstrap templates in WebMatrix, and on ASP.NET in Visual Studio.

New! Office 365 development overview
1 billion Office users worldwide spend an average of 2 to 3 hours per day working in Office clients, with over 400 petabytes of data hosted by Office 365. If you are a web developer, the Office 365 platform gives you the opportunity to offer these users their business decisions, automate everyday tasks and even create customized solutions. You’ll learn how to create solutions directly for Office 365 in context mode using the application model. In addition, you will learn how to call the Office 365 APIs from stand-alone web and mobile applications to use services such as OneDrive for Business, Mail, Calendar, People, and Sites.

Hit! Microsoft Azure Basics
Are you an experienced IT professional? Want to learn more about Microsoft Azure? Join Bob Tabor. As part of this first course, you will learn why the Microsoft Azure platform exists and what problems it solves for young and Fortune 500 companies. You will also learn some general concepts related to implementing Microsoft Azure, as well as typical administrative tasks.

Hit! Express Immersion in JavaScript Development
If you are developing in JavaScript, then this course will help you understand what awaits you in the near future. We tried to give a brief overview of new trends and modern opportunities in the development of JavaScript applications, be it complex web solutions, Windows applications or cross-platform applications, or games. We will also take a look into the future and look at the possibilities of the next version of the JavaScript standard - ECMAScript 6 and touch upon new areas in which JS can already be applied today.

A fascinating introduction to functional programming in F #

Functional programming is a different approach to programming, which is very different from the usual imperative, and which is now rapidly gaining popularity among programmers. F # is the most popular (according to the TIOBE rating) functional programming language that can be used in conjunction with other .NET languages ​​to significantly increase the programmer’s productivity and his level of happiness. In this course, you will become familiar with the F # language and the concept of functional programming, as well as, we hope, learn to enjoy the process of creating programs much more.

NEW! Windows 10: Deployment, Management, Security
The first Windows 10 technology course for IT professionals provides an insight into the details of deploying a new OS across the enterprise, managing with MDM solutions, securing Windows 10 devices, and preventing corporate information leakage. The course discusses new Windows 10 configuration capabilities (provisioning), changes in the deployment tools for the Assessment and Deployment Kit, and features of Upgrade in-place. You will find out what benefits Windows 10 incorporates into Azure Active Directory, what settings are available using MDM, get acquainted with the Microsoft Passport next-generation identity management system, get an idea of ​​the Windows Hello biometric authentication subsystem and much more

Hit!Technical Overview of Windows Server vNext
As part of the course, independent experts talk about the most interesting technical innovations and improvements to the next version of the server operating system from Microsoft. You will get acquainted with the new features of Hyper-V, find out what Windows and Nano Server containers are, how Storage Replica works and in what scenarios, how you can build Windows-based storage using local disks, which is new in RDS.

Using Docker Containers in Azure IaaS Cloud
The course addresses the issues of building a Docker container management system and its use in IaaS-type cloud systems. A brief overview and comparison of various virtualization, emulation and containerization systems such as KVM, Xen, OpenVZ, LXC and others can come in handy. The course also covers the practical application of Docker and its main functions.

Linux workload management in Windows Server and System Center
Do you manage Linux and Windows Server workloads at the same time? Do you, as a Windows Server administrator, also have to deal with Linux workloads? If so, and you want to reduce the number of administration tools used, this course is for you! Our expert, Oguz Pastirmaci, will tell you how to manage Linux workloads in System Center 2012 R2 from a single window.

At the end of our review, I remind you that on the website of the Microsoft Virtual Academy you can find even more online courses and select materials on the topic you are interested in.