Get In Line for iPhone Online

NJIT has announced the opening of registration for the first iPhone Application Development class available to the general public  and conducted  entirely online.  Taken from the for-credit class-section first offered by NJIT in the Spring 2009, the online syllabus contains development instruction, sample code, multi-media resources, and the documentation of the face-to-face offering.  Additionally, this professional development offering awards both CEU's (3) and an NJIT certificate upon successful completion of the class.  Students are required to have a Macintosh computer capable of running the latest iPhone Software Development Kit, an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Though not a pre-requisite to registration, participants in the class  will also be required to register as an developer with Apple, Inc.

So much for the advertisement.

The goal of this class is to produce independent, entrepreneurial code developers who can use their talents to develop skills that lead them into the realm of code-for-profit without having the developers  negotiate the daunting (and recently diminishing) corporate opportunities for application programming, and make some money from their independent effort and dedication.  Fostering independent initiatives is a departure from the NJIT instructive model.  Apart from the degree-oriented credit courses, even NJIT's non-credit offerings have been targeted at students who use their newly learned skills to get a job or enhance the jobs they may already have.  The iPhone application developer comes from an entirely different mold.

Tonight's guest lecturer, Michael Hill of PrimoSpot software, is right out of that mold.  Coming from a background of web application development, Michael spent "a couple of months" learning Apple's Xcode and about a year as the only staff in his new company. He developed PrimoSpot --an application that displays car parking zones and parking availability in New York City.  Boston is the next target of his app with more cities to follow.  As PrimoSpot grows, the plan is to port it to other platforms with the Blackberry clearly in his crosshairs.  Automobile GPS units will not be far behind.

For those who want to swim in this new entrepreneurial pool there are opportunities to learn.  Stanford University has released their iPhone curriculum for free download on iTunes, but there is more to learning to swim than reading a book about lifesaving. The  online iPhone class that NJIT is offering will support  step-by-step instructor-lead teaching and evaluation tailored to the student seeking effective professional development training.

The online iPhone class will begin on May 11th and continue for 10 weeks and offer 30 hours of instruction.  More information is available via e-mail at: iphone@online.njit.edu.   There is an announcement mailing-list available, and a course summary.  The main page for the online offering is: http://online.njit.edu/moodle  and there is a direct link for class registration.


Here's to an interesting and innovative Spring and Summer of iPhone code.



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