Apple’s iPhone moves from the quad to the classroom as colleges offer iPhone SDK courses

“Most college professors will tell students to put away their iPhone or iPod once class starts. But not Ken Joy. His class requires them,” Erica Ogg reports for CNET.

“Professor Joy teaches ECS 198H, Introduction To iPhone Application Development, to undergraduates at the University of California at Davis,” Ogg reports. “On the first day of class in late September UC Davis became one of a growing number of schools that are tailoring classes and focusing academic resources on the making and selling of applications for Apple’s popular mobile platform… ‘Nothing is more relevant than the iPhone or iPod Touch right now,’ Joy said in an interview this week.”

“He’s not the first to teach this class to undergrads. Stanford University has offered the class for a year, as have Florida’s Stetson University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology,” Ogg reports, “But while those schools have taken advantage of Apple’s iPhone Developer University Program–which provides free access to the SDK, Apple hardware, and Apple employees as teachers–Joy’s course is a bit more of a grassroots effort.”

Ogg reports, “ECS 198H wasn’t approved as a university course until 10 days before the fall quarter started in September–in other words, students already had their class schedules set. But less than four hours after Joy placed it in the registration guide, the class was filled to its 35-student capacity, with another 40 people staking out wait-list spots.”

Full article here.