Course-specific Technical Requirements

Computer Hardware

For this course, you will need one computer for each student and one for the instructor. Although Android can potentially be developed on Pentium PCs with 32-bit Windows and 1 GB or less RAM, running emulators requires more memory and processing power. To minimize waiting in the class, it is highly recommended that you provide capable workstations with fast CPUs and as much memory as possible. We have tested various configurations, and have found that the amount of RAM present on your classroom PCs will have a significant impact on the success of the course.

It is recommended that you teach this course using PCs that meet the following minimum hardware configurations:

• PC with Windows 7 or 8, 64-bit
• 6 gigabytes (GB) RAM
• 50 GB available hard disk space
• Keyboard and mouse (or other pointing device)
• 1280 × 1024 or higher resolution monitor
• Network cards and cabling for local network access
• Internet access (contact your local network administrator)
• Projection system to display the instructor’s computer screen

Android Devices

No Android devices are required to teach this course. To enable you to equip a classroom inexpensively and with minimal effort, this course has been designed around the use of emulated (rather than real) Android devices, focusing on an emulated Android Level 10 smartphone and an Android Level 17 tablet (both with Google APIs installed). These versions and formats were selected to enable you to demonstrate a wide range of differences that students might encounter in development of real world apps. Activities in this course have been scripted to assume these two Android versions and device formats will be present in the classroom.

This course could be taught using real devices, if you have an Android 10 smartphone and Android 17 tablet available for each student. However, if you choose to use real devices, you should key through the course completely before you teach the class to ensure that you will be able to deal with any differences that may arise from differences between the configuration of the real devices and the emulated devices.

Even if you do not have enough real devices to equip the classroom, you might consider providing opportunities for students to experiment with those that you have on hand. Students might find it beneficial to learn to work with real devices as an activity above and beyond those provided in the student manual. Practice labs provide a good opportunity for students to do such experimentation.

Software

Android development tools are updated frequently, and the installation process can take considerable time. Although much attention was taken in writing this course to account for possible future differences in the development environment, such variations are impossible to predict. If you can, consider installing the Android development on one system, and then saving an image of that system to transfer onto other classroom computers and using this same system image each time you teach the course.

To prepare a student or instructor system for the class, install the following software according to the instructions provided. You will need the following software for each student and instructor computer:

• Windows 7 or 8.
• Java SE Development Kit. This course was developed on Java Platform (JDK) 7u9 (Windows x86 version). At the time the course was written, this software was available for download fromwww.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads.
• Eclipse Juno SR1 or later and Android SDK version 21 or later, which is provided with this course’s data files . This course was developed on the combined 64-bit ADT Bundle for Windows of Android Developer Tools Build: v21.0.1.201212060302, which included the following tool versions.

  To ensure screen shots and activities in the student manual will match what students see, we recommend that you use the same version to set up your course.

Test the Installation Before You Teach the Class the First Time

Before you teach the course the first time, be sure to key through the course and verify that the software functions correctly on your classroom computers. In our testing, we found that some computers that minimally meet the system requirements may behave erratically. For example, when the learner launches an app, the development environment may recognize only one of the running emulators. With some of the computers we used when testing this course (Asus K53E notebook computers), we found that the BIOS setting to enable Intel Virtualization Technology had a significant effect on how well the Android emulators ran. By disabling Intel Virtualization Technology on those computers, we found that the Android ARM emulators started and ran faster, and were less prone to quirky behavior.