Scholarly Shepherding
September 24th, 2010 by ChrisMost of the time our little flock is heads down, creating new apps and software solutions. On occasion, though, we do find the time to pursue other activities of interest. One common extracurricular theme of late has been continuing education.
UW – IPhone and Cocoa Development
Last year I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to teach Cocoa programming through the University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education department. With help of an all-star advisory board, we managed to create a very unique three-course program. Students with solid prior programming experience were taught the ins and outs of MacOS and iOS development and earned a handsome certificate after 30 weeks of study across 3 quarters.
We have had a fantastic response to the program. In our first year we filled two separate sections to capacity. Students completing the program have been overwhelmingly positive in their assessment. Several already have apps in the store or have started career changes based on the knowledge they gained. It has also been a great experience for the instructors to grow our own skills and be able to pass some wisdom on to a new breed of Cocoa developers.
Our certificate program is going for another round again this year. Both Hal and myself are returning to teach the MacOS and Advanced courses respectively. We are also adding two new faces to the instructor team for the iOS-focused class. Luke Adamson is a veteran Cocoa developer, having worked for The Omni Group and his own Cocoa consulting company for years. Luke will be joined by Paul Goracke, who has been programming Apple frameworks since back in the CodeWarrior days. The program is going to be even better this year and I can’t wait to see the student response.
If you are in the Seattle area and want to start your mastery of the Cocoa platforms I recommend you give our program a look. Our downtown Seattle session is now wait-listed, but the Bellevue session that starts in Winter still has spots. You can apply here. Hope I see you in class this Spring!
HTML5 Mobile Web Development
In addition to all this Cocoa learn’n, our very own Jake Carter is teaching a course of his own. HTML5 is the new hotness and Jake is your Jedi Master, ready to guide you in the ways of CSS3 on mobile platforms. I’ve seen some of the cool demos Jake has worked up and I’m sure this class is going to be great. If you are interested in mobile web development you can’t afford not to dive in and attend this FREE course!
Jake’s class is a live, 10-session, online offering through O’Reilly that starts in October. If you can’t make the online sessions, you can purchase a video edition after. Find out all the details and sign up here. Did I mention, it is FREE?
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