Techno India NJR Institute of Technology, Udaipur as Aakash Project Center is conducting 4 days Aakash Android Application Programming Workshop for Students (23^rd – 24^th Feb 2013 and 2^nd -3^rd Mar 2013) under National Mission on Education through ICT (MHRD, Govt. of India) and in association with IIT Bombay.

It is now well established that the quality of education can be improved considerably by proper use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to supplement the conventional mode of education.

Aakash tablets were launched by MHRD in October 2011. These are Low Cost Access cum- computing Devices. The National Mission on Education using ICT (NME-ICT) envisages that these tablets should be deployed for empowering our students and teachers.

Through this workshop, IIT Bombay plans to train participants on android application programming for Aakash tablets with two objectives. The first is to test and enhance the effectiveness of these tablets for use in classrooms. The second is development of new open source educational applications and contents for Aakash, largely through final year Research and Development projects done by BE/MCA/ME students.

Following topics will be covered in the workshop:

· Android Apps Programming:

· Getting Started with Android

· Setting up Eclipse for Android Software Development

· Android Building Blocks

· Layouts and UI Control.

· Android Application Resources.

· Introduction to Animation and Graphics.

· Data Storage.

· Web Application Development.

· Publishing your Application.

Since the workshop is funded by the National Mission on Education through ICT (MHRD, Government of India), there is no course fee for participation.

Piyush Javeria, Aakash Project Coordinator describes Aakash as an access device in which a Linux environment has been developed atop an Android operating system. Tailored compilers for C, C++, Python and Scilab are ported so that users can write and run programs on the tablet, emphasizing its use as a full-fledged computer.

Powered by a 1GHz processor and backed with a 512 MB RAM, Aakash 2 sports a 7″ capacitive screen, a USB port and micro SD card slot and promises a battery life of 3 hours for normal operations.

He also added that 200 students of pre-final and final engineering students have registered and are attending this workshop with great enthusiasm. They are getting chance to use Aakash tablet and deploy their apps on it. First day concluded with basics of Java and Android with development of simple android application development. Students can participate in National Software Development Competition on AAKASH tablet (http://aakashlabs.org/compete) and win prizes worth Rs 1 lac.

Press Release