What is Android?
Android
is a Linux-based, open-source operating system designed for use on cell
phones, e-readers, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices. For users of
smart phones, Android provides simple access to social networking sites
like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and smooth integration with Google
product like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Calendar. While it is
closely-held by Google, it should not be confused with Google’s Chrome
OS, a web-resident, thin-client operating system designed primarily for
netbooks and tablets rather than for mobile devices. Android has been
adopted by a number of makers, including Motorola, Samsung, HTC, and
Sony Ericsson. The expanding assortment of applications available on
this platform suggests that Android-based phones cancontinue to be
strong competitors within the smart-phone market.
As a mobile platform, Android
has fully grown in quality among hardware manufacturers and the general
public alike in recent years. Its open market model allows registered
software system developers to create applications for automaton mobile
devices in Java and list them in Android Market while not undergoing
review and waiting for approval. Users can transfer from a growing store
of smart-phone applications at Google Market, many of that connect with
existing Google services. They can additionally transfer compatible
Android apps from different locations. Flexible and all-mains, Android’s
facility in supporting screen-based interfaces has also made it the OS
of alternative for several industrial and shopper electronics, including
navigation devices, set-top boxes, kiosks, self checkout stands,
medical equipment, netbooks, tablets, and e-readers.
Who’s doing it?
Computer science departments at various
schools and universities are clench development for the automaton
platform. A grant from Qualcomm and Vodafone this year, for example,
funded a student contest for the best learning-focused application
designed on the Android platform at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign. Engineering doctoral students from the University of
Washington work at Google’s Data Kit that they created. This free
data-collection platform, built on Android, is designed to be used with
mobile devices within the developing world, where information assortment
instrumentality is in short provide and is often too expensive for
sensible use. In Europe, a student team at the University of Applied
Sciences, Northwest Switzerland, wrote a technical report called “Using
automaton in Industrial Automation,”
Android and explains its use in mobile technology.Why is it significant?
As a free mobile OS, Android has been
elite by several hardware manufacturers to run on a wide vary of
devices, include ing cell phones, tablets, e-readers, net books, and
others. Android based phones area unit obtainable from all major
cellular suppliers in the U.S. market, meaning that most students will
choose a phone running Android from the marketer their friends or
families already use. Consequently, Android could bring sensible phone
and pill functionality to a much wider crosswise of scholars and school
members. Like the iPhone, an automaton device could possibilities with
regard to context awareness. Android phones can be established to
acknowledge once the phone operator is in a very automobile, causing the
device to respond by reading text messages aloud and accepting solely
voice input. Or cell phones could silence automatically during category
time if users’ calendars embrace category schedules. Such
location-awareness could see use in campus-based learning activities
like augmented reality games or may prompt a student in the library
pursuing Associate in Nursing English assignment that a previously
requested physics text is currently obtainable for checkout.
What are the downsides?
Platform fragmentation is an issue for
automaton OS devices. Vendors do not have uniform policies with
relevancy OS upgrades and version control, so new application releases
could not work reliably across all automaton devices. Further, while the
variety of applications available for automaton is growing, it
continues to trail the number obtainable from the iTunes store. Fewer
applications could mean less flexibility for students WHO want to
utilize automaton devices in their schoolwork. For developers, the
variety of device types and type factors that use automaton create
development additional expensive; they must adapt their applications to a
range of screen sizes and manufacturer specifications, test the results
on each applicable device, and ensure compatibility and functionality
across the board. As a result, users may find Associate in Nursing
application does not operate precisely the same manner on all automaton
phones and may gift deferent variations when put next to its iOS
equivalent iPhone/Android environment. Finally, Android applications
could pose some privacy or security considerations as a result of,
unlike Apple, Google does not administer or approve third-party
automaton apps before they go to promote. For example, in a joint study
by Duke University, Penn State University, and Intel, researchers
studied a random selection of free automaton applications and found
that of them sent private info together with GPS coordinates and phone
numbers to remote servers without seeking permission or notifying users.
Where is it going?
The Android OS
could accelerate the discussion of sensible phones by providing a free
operating system that may draw from more than one hundred,000
applications, including those that support teaching and learning. Access
to the Android software system development kit (SDK) suggests that the
number of applications can continue to swell as professional developers
offer new options. In addition, the App Inventor, which provides a
web-based visual development environment for those new to this type of
programming, is meant to entice students and developers from outside the
computer science department to write their own applications and thereby
ensure a growing base of apps going forward. If App Inventor proves
simple enough for non-developers to use, faculty members and students
alike may build custom automaton applications for research comes,
learning challenges, and classroom use. This could have interaction
student interest within the work they are doing and additionally in the
tools they use, thereby transforming them from customers of existing
applications to creators of apps designed to meet their needs.
What are the implications for teaching and learning?
The popularity of sensible phones among
customers suggests that developers must assess the spectrum of
operational systems upon that these devices run and determine wherever
their e orts can be best spent. Android and iOS, being the two biggest
players during this market, will continue to o er their users similar
practicality, making it increasingly sensible for the school to style
mobile-based teaching and learning activities. Android, by increasing
the user base, might hasten the integration of mobile technology into
the learning experience and provide students and school new ways that to
interact with content. Many of the tools that support mobile learning
are usually higher suited to communication and data-gathering than to
creative e orts like writing a paper, putting along a video
retrospective, building a series of charts and graphs, or making a class
presentation. Like Apple’s iOS products, Android will integrate with
devices including laptops, netbooks, and tablets, though in the case of
automaton, the list of connectable devices is longer. This
interconnectivity provides an simple manner for college kids to move
data from their sensible phones to locations wherever it will be shared
with others and used in the development of individual and group comes.
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