For those of you who are interested in a career in crypto or blockchain technology but have no idea on where to begin, these are my simple ideas to get some good knowledge and from then on it depends on how far you're willing to take that knowledge with you. As you all know LinkedIn has listed "Blockchain Technology" as the top skill for 2020 (Source: https://www.coindesk.com/linkedin-says-blockchain-is-top-skill-for-2020).
The internet is filled with a lot of information and it is very difficult to get what you need. I am sure you can gain the knowledge on your own but it certainly won't be structured and you'll just be collecting a lot of info without actually practicing or using it somewhere. The time you waste on searching for the info and collecting it from different websites it is better to do an online course. It is best if you invest in yourself so that you're able to adapt to the latest technologies and also contribute for a better future.
Me being a student, I know it is difficult to put in funds for online courses which might be really expensive. But wait I will share a hack that I have been using to gain free certificates from this website COURSERA (https://www.coursera.org/).
Any course you take on coursera it will be properly structured and it has tie ups with many top universities from around the world. The course you take will have quizzes, assignments, video lectures and notes. So you would have to complete and pass in everything to earn a certificate.
Follow these steps to study and earn a free certificate.
1) Firstly open the website and create an account.
2) Once you've created an account log in and search for the course you like. I have searched for BLOCKCHAIN. In the search results you can find a specialization named "Blockchain" from the Buffalo University.
3) Click on the specialization and read about the course and it's contents. See if the course is what you were looking for. Since this is a specialization it is comprised of various other courses. You can also notice that for every specialization or course you take on coursera you have a 7 day free trial. This is the trick you"ll be using to complete the course but DO NOT ENROLL FOR FREE AT ANY CASE. Keep following the guide to utilize it properly.
As you can see from the above image that this specialization has 4 courses namely Blockchain Basics, Smart Contracts, Dapps and Blockchain Platforms.
4) The next step would be to click on the course you'd like to start with. For this example I have selected Smart Contracts.
5) The next step would be to click on the Enroll for free and make sure you DO NOT START THE FREE TRIAL. You will find a small "AUDIT" option below the free trial option. Click on AUDIT to start the course.
6) Congrats! You can now access all the materials from the course. Watch the videos and start learning but note that you can access the quizzes too but cannot really submit them because you have not paid or enrolled for the free trial to get everything.
From the above image it is visible that the assignment has a lock on it which means you can view the assignment complete it but cannot really submit it because you haven't upgraded your account.
7) Now your job would be to start learning and to complete all the assignments. Once you've completed all the 4 courses from this specialization you activate the 7 day free trial and submit all your assignments and earn your free certificates.
You can learn whatever you are interested in be it programming, machine learning or artificial intelligence for every course you'll have the access to a separate 7 day free trial.
NOTE: The 7 day free trial is for that specific course you decide to learn and not your lifetime subscription. So you can keep earning multiple certificates.
Have fun learning, getting educated and earning certificates for free that have a good value!
