Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Android App Development in Fall 2011

I'll be offering an Android Application Development course this coming fall. The prerequisites are Comp 245 (Data Structures) and Comp 345 (OOP) or consent of the instructor.

I'm toying with the idea of offering an on-line, not-for-credit version of the course which will run concurrently with the live course. I would create a series of 30 minute videos that participants would watch on their own time, and then there would be a set time each week when everyone taking the course would join together in an on-line environment. I would be able to answer questions and go into more detail about the week's topic. There would also be some homework. Let me know if you think this is something you would be interested in. The fee would probably be around $150-200.

Some tutorials I created for developing an Android tic-tac-toe app are available on Google Code University. The tutorials teach you how to render graphics, save state information, play audio files, etc. I created the tutorials when I taught the first Android/iPhone programming course last spring. I'll likely be augmenting the tutorials this fall.

I ran across this article last week from the Wall Street Journal reporting that smartphone developers are increasingly in demand (see the figure below). Just a little more motivation to take my course!

7 comments:

  1. Frank, I'd definitely take the online version if you offered it. That would be great. Would owning an Android phone be a requirement? It would obviously be more fun to see apps run on the actual hardware, but is there an emulator that could be used instead?

    Thanks, Jon Wrye

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  2. Jon- Owning a phone would not be a requirement. It is nice to be able to run your apps on an actual device because it can uncover some interface issues you may not have considered. But you can get by with just using the emulator.

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  3. Do you have any infomation about Windows Phone 7 developers demand?

    Thanks!

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  4. I am going to teach a four week segment on Windows Phone 7 development in my GUI course in the fall, but I don't have any info on developer demand. I think the platform is too young to have much demand yet. Anyone who knows existing .NET technologies like XNA and Silverlight can easily make the transition to Windows Phone 7 programming.

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  5. Yea,that's what i was thinking..

    Thank you!

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  6. No plans to offer the on-line version, I guess? :)

    Looks like you had a great summer!

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  7. No, I thought it would be just too much to accomplish this semester, so I'm only teaching it locally. Perhaps if I get brave I'll try online next time.

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