The iPhone and Enterprise in Schools

A couple of my friends (yes I do have some!) have got iphones and I’ve been experimenting with one quite a bit lately. I’m at the point of considering getting one, although I have been advised to wait for the 3G model that is meant to come out later in the year.

Anyway, as I am interested in the iphone I took the time this weekend to watch the video from the Apple event on the March 6 2008. During the event Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone software roadmap, released the iPhone Software Development Kit, and introduced the iPhone Enterprise Beta Program.

If you interested in Apple, Mobile technology or the iphone then the video of the presentation is definitely worth a look. There were a number of interesting parts to the presentation. One was a demo of what Spore might look like for the iphone when it is released later in the year – the graphics that the iphone provide really are outstanding.

However the part of the presentation that I found really interesting was the bit at the end on entrepreneurs (you can forward to about 1h 12mins into the video to see the bit I mean – its right at the end). It reminded me about one of Don’s recent posts on how we teach entrepreneurial skills in schools. The venture capital firm KPCB has created the ifund to invest $100, 000, 000 to support the development of third party apps for the iphone.

I think we have probably got a lot of potential software developers in our Scottish Schools, but what we need to do is give them the time and creative push to help them develop software.

‘If you want to invest in the future, you need to invent it first!’

Comments

[Mark Tennant]

Good post Ollie - I like your ending. Of course, if we want to nurture young software developers two things must happen first: 1) schools need to give Computing as a Science much more prominence, and stop concentrating on boring ICT skills, and 2) myself and my colleagues as computing scientists must start delivering a curriculum that is up-to-date and relevant (Standard Grade still spends weeks on word processing for example - what kid can't use word at 14 years old?!)

Mark.