New Courses for a New Year at St. Petersburg College

computer programs,

 By KIMBERLY ROSS

     The College of Computer & Information Technology (CCIT) will offer two new courses, iPhone/iPod App Development and CGS 1100 Computer Applications, this spring at St. Petersburg College’s (SPC) EpiCenter campus in the new Mac lab.

The idea for the applications development course came about through Professor Brad Yourth at SPC’s Clearwater campus, who teaches Computer /Web Programming & Analysis A.S. courses.  This course is an introductory course in application development for IPhone, IPod and IPad Touch.

     Students who take this course will be required to write applications for Apple devices. This is apropos since SPC is a member of Apple’s iOS Developer University Program.

In order to take this course, students must take the prerequisite CGS 2402 Programming in C++ for Business course. Whether or not this course will be taught in consecutive semesters has yet to be determined.

“If the first course is oversubscribed, we will likely run it again right away. Hopefully it will become popular,” said Yourth.

Yourth hopes that if all goes well he can develop other courses for Blackberry and Android phones that will lead to a mobile devices certificate.

This course meets twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8:40 p.m. beginning the second modmester, March 14 to May 6. For additional information, contact Professor Yourth at yourth.brad@spcollege.edu

Also, in the spring, Professor Therezita Ortiz,  at SPC’s Clearwater campus, will be teaching the CGS 1100 course using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and an open source database program from Open Office.

“We’d like to offer it ideally every eight weeks, or every semester ,depending on the demand,” said Ortiz.

The course will be taught in the new Mac computer lab at the EpiCenter, and although Ortiz recommends that students have access to a Mac computer and Office 2008, it is not required.

This blended course, (taught both on the Internet and in the classroom) will be held from Jan. 10 to March 11 at the EpiCenter from 6 – 8:40 p.m. on Tuesday evenings.

For additional information, contact Professor Ortiz at Ortiz.therezita@spcollege.edu .