Developing the new curriculum

Fancy a career in teaching? Developers could soon be in demand in schools to help inspire the digital creators of tomorrow. Learning to code will be taught in primary schools alongside science and history to help students understand and navigate the digital world. Future generations are moving away from just using technology; they are creating technology.

It seems luring programmers from an early age has its rewards, they have incredibly analytical minds, time on their hands and the motivation to develop something fun and creative that they want to show their friends. Would you have the patience to teach a room of seven year olds to code? Such demand may be putting teachers off, who do not have the skills to cover such an intensive topic. Is there now a need for a new generation of teachers?

To give some context, young people will soon be able to write a program, learn computational thinking and know about algorithms: by age seven. Before they are teenagers, they have the potential to build a smartphone app, and come GCSE age they are capable of writing sophisticated puzzle programs. The intro video from Justin Rattner’s keynote at the 2012 Intel Developer Forum gave us an insight into the future from an 11-year olds perspective. Is this similar to the world you grew up in? It certainly varies from my childhood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDWetq6g0mg

It is a challenging time now with so much change apparent in personal computing, but at least several doors are opening. Developers have a lot more opportunity to create something memorable with the emergence of sensor-led devices. For app developers, Ultrabooks running on Windows 8* open up a world of possibilities. By merging touch and sensor hardware with Windows 8 on the latest Ultrabooks this provide new opportunities for both the young and old(er) developer. There is a chance to challenge the standard app development and take personal computing to the next level. Yes, touchscreens have been on PCs for a few years but this is the first time it has been so widely implemented. Let’s not just stop at touchscreen, other sensors can get a look in too: there are also gyroscopes, compasses, and accelerometers to play with. Now though all of these features are available on devices, such as Ultrabooks, with a lot more power, making for bigger better coding opportunities.

Whether you are a new developer looking to write applications or have an application that you wish to enable for Ultrabooks, here are a few things to consider:

1. Get the senses going

Contrary to conventional inputs, enabling an application for touch involves re-imagining app design for the best user experience. Windows 8 provides standard multi-touch gestures that could add new life to your application while adding a fluid and natural interactive element.

2. Design apps with power saving in mind

An application that isn’t designed to take advantage of power saving features of the hardware can seriously drain battery without this being obvious to the developer or the user. Check out the Green Code to help you design and write applications that are power efficient.

3. Perform for longer

Power and performance go hand in hand, and software has a crucial role to play in this balancing act. Designing your application for optimal performance ensures that your device conserves power and lasts longer on battery. This all requires careful consideration, but there are ways to discover and reduce performance bottlenecks and improve power efficiency.

Hopefully with these resources, a few years’ experience and devices on hand to challenge the future, you can create apps that will make everything else seem old-fashioned. Potentially even the apps that are created by this new generation. Perhaps it is time to get ahead, before they do.

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This blog post is written by Softtalkblog, and is sponsored by the Intel Developer Zone, which helps you to develop, market and sell software and apps for prominent platforms and emerging technologies powered by Intel Architecture.