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Completing a Coursera Specialization for Free

Coursera provides continuing education just like Udacity and offer the full learning experience that I am accustomed to, including lesson videos, reading materials, projects, discussion forums, and graded projects which are peer-reviewed. I recently completed the Full-stack Web Development in React specialization from Coursera, all for free. It’s called a specialization because it is made up of three courses below each with their own certifications and which takes 4-6 weeks each to complete: 1. Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4 2. Front-End Web Development with React 3. Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB I started the program in December 2021 and finished it in June 2023 however. The intent of this post is to explain how I was able to fund the entire specialization for free. In December 2021, I read on social media that Coursera allowed for one free course per year if you were a student and had an email address from a partner school. I gave my stu

Udacity Front-end Developer Challenge Daily Sprint Updates

As per the Next Generation Tech Booster Challenge Program, we are asked to submit a daily progress report on slack. We just need to answer these three questions in the post: • What did I work on today? • What I will work on tomorrow? • What issues are blocking my progress? I take this logging opportunity to also report on the progress I am making with my Coursera course “Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express, and MongoDB”; and my Linux Foundation course “LFS258 Kubernetes Fundamentals”. To help with completing above, here are some links posted by the slack moderators that I try to use to get through my workload: How to Organize your Desk like a Pro Tips on how to achieve consistency Strategies we can employ to stop Procrastination Eliminate Time Wasting Activities by Using the Eisenhower Box Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy The Ivy Lee Method The 15-Minute Routine Anthony Trollope Used to Write 40+ Books The instructor for the course is Daniel and is pure entertainment. Ther

How I passed the AZ-104 Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate Exam

I had been planning to take the Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect track back when the prerequisite was AZ-303 and AZ-304. Life got in the way and now these two prerequisites have been deprecated and replaced by AZ-305. However, in order to take this exam, I needed to get through AZ-104 first. Here are resources that I used to prepare for it: * GlobalKnowledge/Skillsoft 4-day BootCamp. I have been using this training company for a while now but it has steadily just gotten worse. The trainers are outsourced and not very professional in my opinion. I do not recommend GlobalKnowledge at all. I didn’t really learn much from the lesson material but the lesson/challenge labs were very helpful. This bootcamp comes with an Azurepass subscription and a free exam voucher. I actually racked up to $90 out of the $100 credit provided on this subscription which expires in 12 days so I better delete all the resources before then to avoid incurring more. I initially booked the exam the end of Dec

Wall of Graduates from the AI Product Manager Nanodegree

The "Wall of Graduates" is a Google sites page showing a profile list of students who graduated from the Udacity AI Product Manager nanodegree. We were asked two questions to include in our profile and there are those two questions. What obstacles (big or small!) did you face during Phase 2 & how did you overcome them? I think the biggest was time constraint. I was also doing my Georgia Tech course in the spring and this fell on the same timeline. The other obstacle is that the course material was not technical but more for product managers. This meant a lot of time was spent networking in slack participating community-driven initiatives. I did learn Artificial Intelligence concepts but it didn't need to last from December 2020-December 2021. How are you making use of your newfound skills? I don't use AI at work but it has allowed me to open my eyes to possibilities. We recently implemented MS Azure Cognitive service utilizing text translation. Although not

4 Things You Must do When Taking a Proctored Exam

This was my proctored-exam transcript last night when I took the AWS Solutions Architect exam (SAA-C02) as part of my recertification because it expires every 3 years. This was a remote proctored exam through PSI and should have been easy because this wasn’t the first time I used their service. For whatever reason, last night’s experience was so bad that an exam that started at 10:45pm didn’t finish until early morning 2:15am. Some things that you could do to avoid what I went through: 1) Test your computer 24 hours before start time This was my fault and I should tested sooner. I did start preparing foe the prerequisites as early as 8pm and thought I had enough time to complete everything as it was the same computer I used three years ago when I got certified with AWS. However, I found that since the last time I took this exam, my hardware changed (different web cam, different speakers) and I installed more software like Docker that the proctoring software (PSI Secure Browser) didn

60 Days of Udacity: A Bertelsmann Technology Scholarship in AI

I applied and was recently awarded the Bertelsmann Technology scholarship where a group of students take part in an Artificial Intelligence track made up of 5 parts to be completed in 3.5 months. As part of taking the class, we have to take part in a slack channel where we post our daily studies for 60 days reflecting on what we have learned. This is a transcription of those 60 days. The public github wiki is located here https://github.com/chromilo/udacity-bertelsmann-scholarship/wiki Day 1: I am in p3 (Datasets) doing the xray annotation project. I have created the appen job using the "Image Categorization" template. I uploaded the xray image data and modified the CML to make the questions specific to checking for pnemonia. Also updated the Examples section. I am still working out the usage of conditional only-if in checkboxes to determine what other smarts to include when annotators go through the page. Created one Question so far and will continue working on the ot

Completed a course at BCIT: Relational Database and SQL

Back in December 2011, I just completed a 12-week evening course COMP 1630 at BCIT in downtown Vancouver. This was a great course worth 5 credits, and delved into database design, architecture, a little systems analysis, and a lot of SQL syntax. We learned about Crow’s Foot Notation in building an initial requirements design before translating that into actual tables, columns, indices, contraints, etc. It helped strengthen what I already knew of database systems and look forward to taking database administrator-type courses this year.

Notes on Freelance Camp 2011 – How to Write a Book (Session #3)

This is a continuation from my previous post What Clients and Consultants Really Think? (Session#2) . The third session that I attended is on writing and publishing a book. How to Write a Book, by Kathrin Lake This was a very interesting session for me because I aspire to one day publish my very own paperback. Kathrin says that for her, it usually takes her 2-3 months to write a book. She says that it is about trust, in that readers wants to get to know you. She also says that successful writers have memorable stories to tell. They are about life stories and must have a message. Everyone knows how to write but Kathrin says you must intimately know the process that you use to do that. If you don’t already, then you have to figure out your own process for writing. Her suggestion for finding your writing process is to: 1) write blogs; 2) get the bulk of your book done; 3) read, educate yourself. Editing If you are starting out, you probably should send out an electronic copy of y