Budding app developers at GMIT

SOFTWARE development students in GMIT are gaining recognition for apps they are developing for the Windows Phone platform, with an increasing amount of their programs being certified and brought onto the market. The students in their final year of the B.Sc (Hons) in Software Development are making apps in areas such as education, information and novelty, as well as gaming. [private] GMIT software development lecturer Damien Costello says the GMIT Maths and Computing Department is delighted with the students' achievements. 'The increasing use of mobile telephony and smart phones in particular has prompted significant changes in software development programmes in GMIT, to adapt to and reflect changing demands on graduates. 'We have been using apps in the classroom as a teaching and learning tool, and our final year students are developing these apps for Microsoft Windows Phone as part of their course work,' he added. There are an estimated 3.4 billion mobile phones in use in the world and 38 per cent of them are expected to be smart phones by 2014. 'Our students are developing a portfolio of work that they can easily demonstrate at an interview, for instance. It's great for them and it's an exciting time for software development, with increasingly ubiquitous Internet connectivity, falling hardware prices, cloud computing and more sophisticated software development environments now available, the possibilities are endless.' [/private]