On the 24th and the 25th of September, a 2-day workshop on “Android OS based Application Development” was held in the Faculty of engineering and technology. The session was organised by the Computer Society of India Student Chapter in collaboration with ARK Technosolutions, a Mumbai based company which imparts training to professionals and students in the fields of mobile application development, robotics etcetera. The official recharge partner of the session was Freecharge.
With the emergence of mobile phones, PDA’s, smart phones and other mobile technology the need for mobile application development has also increased. Today, there are numerous interesting mobile applications available which makes the use of mobile phones more exciting. Android is the first truly open and comprehensive software platform for mobile devices; it’s a complete software to run a mobile phone but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.
Held in room 213, the main computer lab of the faculty, the students were trained in the process of creating applications in the android mobile operating system with the aid of a LCD projector. The instructors were Mr. Prithvi Pal Thakur, from Bangalore and Mr. Aditya Dua, from New Delhi. The event’s publicity was extensively carried out by its co-ordinators, Mohd. Aarif Khan and Ahmed Muneeb.
The workshop was attended by 70 participants, hailing from 12 different engineering colleges which included Jamia Hamdard, IIT Delhi, USIT, JSS Noida, Galgotias University, JIIT Noida, G.B. Pant College of Engineering, IndraPrastha University among others. Anas Jawed came all the way from Integral University, in Lucknow, for the workshop.
The participants were tutored in four sessions spread over two days, from 09:00am to 05:00pm on both days. In the first session, they learnt about the Android operating system, some applications and exchanged ideas on application development, its future and android architecture. Following a lunch hour, they were taught the android emulator, designing a user interface and explored API demos.
The next day, after the queries of the previous session were cleared, the workshop went further to a more advanced level, wherein the students experimented with sample applications and a click listener.
The fourth session was devoted to browsing through e-book codes/projects, importing codes and running those applications and finally deploying the application onto the mobile phone.
At the end of the workshop, a written quiz was organised consisting of questions designed to test the participants’ knowledge of the topics taught in the session. The winners were awarded cash prizes and freecharge coupons. The results were:
Deepankar Madan (G.B.Pant College of Engineering) – 1st position
Omar Ghufran (JIIT, Noida) – 2nd position
Syed Saad Hussain (Jamia Millia Islamia) – 3rd position
Himanshu Babbar (IP University) – 4th position
Yawar Siddiqui (Jamia Millia Islamia) – 5th position

The students were then awarded with certificates of participation, and the organisers, with their certificates of appreciation by Mr. Tanveer Ahmad, the branch counsellor of CSI-JMI. Each attendee was also provided with a CD which contained their android kit, eclipse emulator, android projects, applications and e-books on the same.
Deepankar Madan, a participant, summed up his experience as, “I learnt a lot from this workshop and also from the Linux geek meet up during AlgoRhythm (CSI-JMI’s festival) in March. Thanks for conducting this wonderful android workshop. I enjoyed every moment of it” while the feedback forms, distributed amongst the students, reflected positive reviews with the majority terming the session as instructive, informative and highly useful.

Students learning at the Android Workshop