Back-to-School Resources for a Successful Start

As another summer comes to an end, it’s time to start getting ready to return to school. Although it can be bittersweet for many, going back to school is also an exciting time. It’s a time to get excited about your future, start getting organized about your education, and see how you can maximize your educational experience. Usually, this includes readjusting your schedule and shopping for some new supplies. It could also mean moving into a new home or reorganizing your study space to maximize creativity and learning.

However, just as you need to prepare yourself physically, it’s also important to ensure you’re ready mentally. Luckily, regardless of what back to school means for you, some great resources are available to help you get off on the right foot. Here, we’ll cover some great back-to-school resources for a successful start.

Free Resources Available for Students

Although hundreds of apps or websites are hidden behind paywalls, they’re not always feasible on a student’s budget. Yet, with some searching, we’ve found some great free resources available for students of all ages. Below are our top picks for high-quality back-to-school resources that will actually make a difference.

Resources for Coding and Idea Development

As we continue to live in an increasingly digital world, it’s no secret that jobs in coding are skyrocketing. In-demand coding skills and idea development are crucial factors for students working towards a career in coding and programming. However, as with many of these jobs, lack of experience can hinder education and future success in competitive job markets. Luckily, GitHub understands that real-world tools can be cost-prohibitive. As such, they’ve developed the GitHub Student Developer Pack.

This free resource is a great way to supplement your back-to-school learning and provides some unbeatable experiences. Some of the most notable experiences include:

• Virtual Event Kit — this provides students with resources to design and run their own virtual events.
• Hackathon in the Cloud — this experience allows students to learn how to efficiently organize, promote, and communicate about their events in hacker communities.
• Aspiring Creatives — when looking for tools to develop designs and collaboration skills, this experience provides some great resources.
• Launchpad: Intro to JavaScript — if you want to learn how to write and edit code, this experience provides great, interactive tutorials.
• Career Readiness — for students approaching their final semesters, this experience gives you the tools to get ready to enter the working world.
• Intro to Web Dev — this provides students with the tools they need to start learning how to design and build their own websites.
• Mobile App Development — for students looking to bring their ideas to life, this experience provides all the resources needed to design, build, test, and deploy a mobile application.
• Data Science & Machine Learning — this experience provides students with the tools to analyze, collaborate, and harness the power of predictive data.
• Primer: Codespaces — this provides step-by-step resources to help you start working on Codespaces.

Resources for Maths

While this resource needs to be activated by an educator, students can ask their teachers to apply for access with Brilliant. Brilliant is a great resource that provides classrooms with thousands of interactive lessons to help supplement maths. This resource is free and is filled with 70+ courses that were designed to inspire and cultivate out-of-the-box thinking and processing.

Resources to Learn Design

Design is another skill that’s becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world. It helps foster creative freedom and can be used for marketing, engineering, content development, website development, and more. However, figuring out how to perfect user experience through design can be a bit overwhelming at first. That’s why both Canva and Figma have created free resources for students to master the art of design.

Canva offers several student resources to help with the creation of designs, documents, and presentations in minutes. It can be used for both projects and studying or to gain more experience in the process of design. There are plenty of free templates to help, infographic layouts, and more. This resource can also be used by students who simply want to make their notes more easily readable so they can enjoy the act of studying or reviewing presentations.

Figma also provides resources for students to learn valuable skills in the design world. Their free Figma for Education plan can help students create portfolios and prepare them for their future careers with real-world experience.

Additional Free Courses for Development

The last free back-to-school resource on our list is Coursesity. Coursesity is a platform that hosts over 50,000 online courses from various platforms around the internet. They have collections organized by skill set, website, and even university. Whether you want to learn JavaScript or Python or study business skills, this website will provide you with high-quality supplemental material to help you boost your understanding and gain real-world experience. Although some courses are behind a paywall, they provide students with revolving discounts. If you’d rather not pay, they still have over 10,000-20,000 free course options available.

Regardless of what you’re studying, supplementing your learning with free resources is a great way to get the most out of your education. That’s why Tandem offers free language exchange to our members around the world. It’s a great way to start learning a new language on your own or to supplement your classes at university or local language schools. With options for direct messaging, voice notes, video calls, and even group learning experiences, Tandem is a great way to learn a language based on your communication preferences. With over 10 million members, there are tons of opportunities to find a conversation partner in your target language and even make some friends along the way.

If you want to access a great, free resource to supplement back-to-school language lessons, Tandem is a great place to connect with like-minded individuals while improving your fluency at the same time. All you need to do is download the app, match with a native speaker of your preferred language, and start communicating!