New course by JKUAT Endeavour graduates

Following the success of the first JKUAT Endeavor program which involved a course in mobile application development in Java some IT under students under the umbrella of Jkuat Linux Users Group (JLUG) teamed up and approached some students of the first endeavor program. The students approached were Omondi Ochieng, Kirui Kennedy and Masai Abel. Their request was that they too needed to learn the same as they had missed out in the first endeavor program. The class is made up of around 20 students all from the IT department.

The course is to last for six weeks, one session every Saturday. The first lesson under this program kicked off on 20^th February this year. The course introduction was done by Kirui. It covered the various aspects of mobile telephony, its associated technologies and the available market for mobile applications. The course curriculum was also discussed and the goals to be achieved were laid down. The first lab was then given to the students in order to gauge their programming capabilities. Since the available time is limited the students were divided into groups and advised to start thinking of possible projects as early as possible.

JKUAT/MIT AITI-x: Information Pull Lecture

Today I gave a lecture on Information Pull. The lecture started with a detailed explanation of what information pull is and it’s applications. Just a few minutes after the beginning of the lecture, there was an Internet connection disruption and students could not access the internet. Thanks to Safaricom LIVE we were able to conduct our demonstration as planned.

Later the connection was restored just in time when the students were about to start the practice exercises. They wrote basic codes to view and parse page source of the HTML files which we had uploaded. The students seemed very interested in the subject based on the questions they were raising. Some of the areas covered in the lesson included; highlight of the Java Input & Output Streams, parsing/pulling information from HTML and SAX API (David, one the student showed great interest in this).

Students following the lecture

We appreciate the great contribution of MIT AITI to the course. They have been following up on the course progress, giving us guidance where necessary.

JKUAT/AITI-x: Introductory Session on Threads

A number of students had gone to attend The 9th IEEE AFRICON Conference. There were some who had gone to present projects like Edwin who was presenting a J2ME bank application. Good luck to them all! We hope the bring back many trophies to JKUAT. I will do a post highlighting the projects presented at the conference by JKUAT students.

Now back to JKUAT/AITI-x! Yesterday Andrew introduced the students to Java Threads. They were given a basic overview of threads, how they work and where they are applied. An echo client server sample application was used to illustrate how the threads work. Two versions of the application we done: one showing a case where a new thread is created to process every new request and another to show the reuse of threads using thread pools. Threads will be revisited later in a more elaborate session as it is an important concept.

Andrew and Samuel checking lab work of the students

JKUAT/MIT AITI-x: Week 1 Roundup

On Wednesday the students raised a number of questions regarding some problems in the skills assessment lab. We had a discussion where students chipped in the solving of the problems. We were encouraged by the students participation in the discussions. After the discussion, we had a lecture on Generics, Interfaces & Callbacks.

A student giving his input during the discussion

The Maiden JKUAT/MIT AITI-x Session

The session kicked off at 4.30pm at SCC101 with 50 students in attendance. Andrew introduced the instructors and gave a brief background of the JKUAT Endeavour Program and its objectives. Dr. Waweru then gave a talk to the students on Mobile Development and how relevant it is to the Kenyan market. He welcomed the students to the JKUAT/MIT AITI-x course and officially launched it.

Dr. Waweru (Director Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology, JKUAT) addresses the students during the launch of JKUAT/MIT AITI-x

JKUAT/MIT AITI-x Java Mobile Application Development Course

The JKUAT/MIT AITI-x Java Mobile Application Development Course is the first course under the JKUAT Endeavor Programme. It is an extension of the MIT AITI Mobile Application Development Course. Its main objective is to teach students how to develop real-world mobile applications targeted to the African market.

The course will be conducted at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology Main campus in Juja. The course will be offered to 30 students who have been selected from the various IT courses offered at the University.

Course Overview

• Intermediate Java concepts (Generics, Threads, Information Pull, Regular expressions)
• J2ME Programming (Basic Concepts, User Interface Elements)
• SMS Applications (Basic Concepts, Sending & receiving SMS messages using USB GSM Modems)
• Android Applications (Basic Concepts, User Interface design)
• Group Mobile Application Development
• Mobile Application Competition & Guest Lectures

JKUAT Endeavor Programme

In August 2009, 3 JKUAT Alumni developed the JKUAT Endeavor Programme to act as a platform for sharing knowledge, experiences and skills in our Kenyan Universities. One of our main goals is to ensure that the students have the required skills to blend into the industry to promote development in Africa. Through Industry partnerships we will offer courses on ICTs with an emphasis on independent research, problem solving, and entrepreneurship. The idea was inspired by the MIT AITI that has been running in Kenya since 1999.

For the start, we have organized a course in Mobile Application Development Course in Java scheduled to take off on September 15th 2009. The course will be an extension of the MIT AITI Mobile Application Development Course. AITI has granted us permission to access and use their curriculum in the course.