Computer Science Mobile App Development?

[supportman]

I've been asked by our head of Computer Science to look into solutions for teaching "Mobile App Development".

 

I've had a look at Xamarin and Android Studio which he suggested but both seem to have issues with the huge Android SDK being installed in each user profile.

 

So can anyone suggest a better bit of software or cloud system to teach building apps?

[dhicks]

So can anyone suggest a better bit of software or cloud system to teach building apps?

 

This is going to depend rather on how much the teacher themselves understands and how, in their mind, they picture an "app", but I'd go for a Javascript client-side library capable of running on most web browsers. From a resources / installation point of view you then just need somewhere for the pupils to host a web page. Myself, I find Bootstrap simplest to get my head around (start web page, import Javaacript library, away you go), but I think React is rather more in fashion right at the moment.

[slugshead]

I installed Android studio in our comp room under a local account created just for this, I'm familiar with it and and Java. I was taking the sessions so a no brainer for me. Many students installed it on their personal devices too.

 

I insisted that anyone with an android phone turns on developer mode and USB debugging, load the apps straight into phones rather than the slow emulators.

 

Comp room got wiped at the end of the academic year.

 

I've seen others install into a virtualbox VM and have the students load it up in the VM.