My Journey as a Scholar in Google Africa Challenge Scholarship with Udacity and Andela tagged: ALCwithGoogle 3.0
The Beginning…
I mostly spend my time at Start Innovation Hub owned by Mr. Hanson Johnson. I always had a good time with my Laptop and WiFi in order to keep me online. On April 28, 2018. I was told about Google Africa Challenge Scholarship by my in-law Mr. Aniedi Udobong , when I heard this opportunity, I took a bold step to apply on April 28, 2018. After 5 days, I heard my Start Hub friends asking me if I was selected for the scholarship, before then I have been checking my e-mail but didn’t find any mail with Andela or Udacity. In additional 5 days time which was on 8th May, 2018, I checked my e-mail again guess what! Fortunately I saw a mail from Udacity welcoming me to the Google Africa Challenge Scholarship to go to my Classroom. The following day I received another mail by ALCwithGoogle 3.0 with a content Congratulations on bagging the Google Africa Challenge Scholarship!
Since May, my developers career started I go through the online course syllabus on Udacity and resources where necessary as much as I could.
I can never forget 11th May where we had a Slack Party some scholars get confused of this party, even me at first I was confused of what the party all about. Later I figured it out that it was for every region to know their mentor, organizer, facilitator and all other people that was meant to know.
On May 26th we had our first meetup at Start Innovation Hub where we get to know each other and share knowledge together.
On 30th May we had our first Challenge 1.0 - #RamadanChallenge. The challenge was aimed at driving completion of the scholarship course in readiness for the nano-degree. Also working in teams by providing an avenue to foster collaboration amongst learners which was essential to the program. I put my best working with my teammates in fe-group-6, fe-group-27 through out the challenge days in order to complete it on time and also help as many group mates, team mates and track mates to complete it within the same time frame! This was a real challenged, I had to DM my group members on Slack, check up on their progress and offer to help if they needed help. gratefully, I completed the course content needed to be submitted within the challenge days in which the deadline was 15th June, 2018.
After the challenge, in my Udacity classroom, I was being introduced to JavaScript.
On 9th June, 2018 we had our ALCwithGoogle 3.0 Meetup 2.0
Few days time on 24th June, 2018. We had our Challenge 2.0-#7DaysOfCode. This challenge was to put all that we learnt during the Google Africa Challenge Scholarship into work by building a Pixel Art Maker app that uses the grid and color to design images. The app source code was to be placed in a public repository on Github and hosted my app on Github Pages I completed my app in 5 days time and submitted it before the closing date which was 00:00am hour on 1st July, 2018.
My Final Project by Udacity and ALCwithGoogle
Development
To get started, before I wrote any code, I loaded up index.html from the starter project to see how things look! I noticed that the design.js file was implemented in the tag in the index.html file. My goal was to build out the design.js file to achieve all the interactive elements on the page! For more details on instructions visit Udacity Classroom for the project.
Now, I open up design.js. As I started writing my code, I kept these three tasks in mind: Defining my variables by selecting the DOM elements that the user will interact with. This is where my jQuery skills can come into play! For instance, on the submit button, the table, and the color picker needed to be accessed. The value of the color selected needs to be stored as well, since the clicked cell in the table needs to be set to the selected color.
I added event listeners to the relevant DOM elements, so that user input can be color values and table sizes can be dynamically set by the user.
I set the size of the cross stitch canvas as an N by M grid with the makeGrid() function. I use my knowledge of JavaScript loops to dynamically clear and create the table based on user input. Each cell will have an event listener that sets the background color of the cell to the selected color. I now tested it by the time I finished, I notice that I was been able to create a canvas of any size, choose a color using the color picker, and click on the canvas’s table cells to set their color.
On 29th June, 2018. We had our final meetup which was ALCwithGoogle 3.0 meetup 3.0
Finally, eight weeks of Google Africa Challenge Scholarship📆, two challenges 💪, three physical meetups 🏠 and some new developer friends catch up, I was so excited to among the scholars. For the next selected scholars, it was another challenge to work hard in order to be selected for the (500 scholars) that will proceed to the NanodegreePhase.
Again, I believed and hoped and expected that I would be selected. I basically did not agree to think of any other outcome than positive outcome.
Which I’m still expected…
My Appreciation
I am so grateful to say a BIG thank you to Google, Andela and Udacity for giving out the great opportunity to me and other African youths to get hands-on skills that we will help us use the wonderful skills to create the new Africa 🌍 of young developers that will build solutions in Africa.
To my fellow scholars in the Andela Learning Community, whether you are a Nanodegree beneficiary or not, I thank you all for the wonderful memories, and time we alwasy had together on slack, I encourage everyone to keep sourcing for tech learning, let our dream lies on building solution for our people in Africa and at large.
Cheers Devs!!!
@Google Udacity Scholars @Google @Scholarships In Africa @Nanodegree @Andela
