After ten years of prototyping mobile apps… WAP (2001), Flash Lite Apps for PDA’s (2005) , tilt emulators (2008), etc. we finally have games and apps running on real mobile devices at Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one-year post grad program.

We had a few running second term last year but now all the students have them on iOS, Android with Windows Mobile 7 and Blackberry just around the corner.  In class we have a dozen iPhone, iPod Touc, iPads, Android ViewSonic and Samsung Galaxy devices.  The students have apps up and running on the devices primarily through using the Adobe Flash / AIR packagers for iOS and Android which lets them build once and publish across many devices.  We have a quick look at the native iOS apps as well and some of the students have done personal project work in this area.

Tyson Leslie's Punch Driven Android App

The tools and techniques to prepare apps for mobile devices are still in their early stages often requiring a dozen steps with installs and command lines, etc.  to run emulators, handle signing, etc.  We have been working through these steps in our second term Multimedia Pioneering course and some of the notes and discussion can be found on our Flash to Mobile Facebook group which is open to everybody to join.  The skills to build the applications in general are embedded in our other courses from Web Authoring, Motion Graphics, Web Design and Application Development where Web based apps are also looked at.

William Chong's DumbBots

The response from the students when seeing their apps on actual devices was so exciting.  Here are a few blog posts of the experience – certainly not all roses but that’s what happens when you pioneer technology.

Will – http://interactivewill.wordpress.com/
Greetings Pioneers! Let’s continue the MOBILE-STREAK!

Joanna – http://ongjf.wordpress.com/
At last, I finally got some of my flash applications into the iphone! I’ve been waiting for this moment since the start of the term!!

Antonio – http://otiracimm.wordpress.com/
I can now put my apps on Android devices!

There were many more and we look forward to presenting the apps at our Open House in April or May – stay tuned!

-2011-