Resources for Teaching Windows Phone - for anyone who needs to teach phone!

  • Article

Whether you are a professor, an associate professor, instructor, or just thinking of delivering a lecture to your gaming club on Windows phone, it helps to have some resources at your disposal! My favourite resources are the ones that have been created for me. That’s why I wanted to take a minute to talk about some of the resources we have available to help introduce your audience how to develop for windows phone:

  • Devices
  • Tools
  • Incentives
  • Lectures

Devices

Need a phone for demonstrations or testing? It’s taken care of. I know that some applications are hard to test and visualize without having a physical device to test them. That’s why we have Windows Phones put aside to loan to faculty and technical clubs that can be used during a lecture to show the capabilities of the phone. Just email me at susan.ibach@microsoft.com and let me know when you need the devices so we can arrange to send them to you. If you are going to have students develop phone applications as part of a course, we can arrange for loans that will last for the duration of the course.

Tools

You need the software tools to develop a phone application? It’s taken care of! All the tools you need to develop a Windows Phone application are available at App Hub. You have a couple of options for your development environment. You can just download the Software Development Kit at App Hub and it will install Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone on your PC. But, since you are working with students, and students have access to Dreamspark, you may as well take advantage of it! You can download and install the full copy of Visual Studio 2010 Professional, and then download and install the Software Development Kit. This will just add the Phone projects and tools to your existing Visual Studio installation. If you are trying to teach good user interface design or graphic design to your students they can also install Microsoft Expression Studio Ultimate from Dreamspark which can be used to design graphics and prototype sketches of your phone application.

Incentives

Need a reason to build a phone application? It’s taken care of! There are many reasons to build a windows phone application. It’s the easiest mobile application platform to use, with Windows Phone you can focus on the code, and let the tools take care of everything else! You can get an application into a world wide marketplace while there is still room to be noticed. You can build your portfolio. You can apply the theory you are learning in class to the real world. You can make money. As an added incentive, right now we have a promotion called the Mango App Challenge (that promotion ended Dec 15th 2011, check out the Developer movement in effect until May 20th, 2012) , publish quality apps, get cool stuff like Kinect, Hard drive, or a phone! !

Another great incentive to build a phone application is the Imagine Cup, a student competition that lets students shine on a world stage! In 2011/2012 there is a Windows Phone game category, and you can also use a Windows Phone app to develop a solution in the software design category. What better way to get your school noticed than to have a team represent you at the Canadian or World finals!

Lectures

Need slides and labs? It’s taken care of! You don’t have to create your slides and exercises from scratch. There are some great courses available to download from the Faculty Connection site

We know it can be difficult to keep up with all the new technologies and incorporate them into your courses and programs. We’re trying to make it as easy as we can for you to teach students learn how to develop for Windows Phone. I highly recommend that if you are a professor, you sign up for the Faculty Newsletter to stay abreast of any new promotions or curriculum resources that become available on Windows Phone and other technologies.