Now universities offer an 'App' class
Tuesday, 02 February 2010, 15:06 IST   |    2 Comments
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Now universities offer an 'App' class
Bangalore: With over 140,000 apps and over three billion downloads, Apple's App Store might be one of the greatest entrepreneurial tools the world has ever seen. Now even universities, recognizing its potential, have begun to offer a course in app development, reports CNBC. One of the latest schools to offer a course in app development is the University of Minnesota, thanks to Professor Dr. Charles Miller. According to Miller, the demand by MA and PhD students for an app course led to its introduction. "My responsibility in the Learning Technologies program at the University of Minnesota is focused on energizing and supporting our students as they explore innovative design and development opportunities for meaningful online learning. I believe that apps targeted at education constitute a large and evolving piece of that focus," said Miller to CNBC. In this introductory course, the students will create both web-based and native apps, and the target audience, interactivity, problem space, and context for the designs will be their choice. Miller's focus will be on teaching design logic, vision, and conceptualization. However, the University of Minnesota is not the only one offering this kind of a course. Stanford, MIT, and the University of Washington also have similar iPhone development courses and certificates. "Knowing that your target audience will be interacting and collaborating on a single platform (the iPhone or iPad) offers exciting interaction possibilities and steers away from developing for the lowest common technology denominator. For example, the design of an app that motivates students to go out and explore/document their surroundings by capturing geotagged media (videos, photos, text) analyzing these media, and collaborating with their peers is an exciting opportunity. When a single device affords these types of possibilities in a simple app, I become very excited as both a teacher and a designer," says Miller. The primary goal of the course is to inspire and support students in thinking creatively as they envision and develop apps for the future of education and online learning. For the first semester, the iPhone, iPad, and Apple iPhone SDK are the tools that will be used.

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