2012 NCIT Summer School

The 9th edition of the NCIT Summer School re-emphasised the interest our students have in learning mobile technologies such as Android. We proposed four projects on the national-level internship platform Stagii pe Bune:

• mobile learning
• augmented reality
• medical applications
• robot remote control

After the interviews, we accepted 15 students for the Mobile Development section of the 2012 NCIT Summer School, mostly in their 2nd year of studies, but also a couple in their 3rd year and one in the final year.

As usual, the Summer School started with an Android bootcamp. Special thanks go to Serban Chiricescu, Tony Dobre, Razvan Prejbeanu, Daniel Rizea and Bogdan Davidoaia, senior students that helped organize and run the bootcamp, had presentations and tutored the students in their first Android apps. We were happy to welcome, besides the students in the Summer School, a couple of students from the other sections of the NCIT Summer School, as well as three PhD students from our department and from the Electronics department. 

The two days of bootcamp were divided in several sections:

1. Day 1: managing projects in Android, building UIs, using libraries (OpenCV)
2. Day 2: communication through WiFi and Bluetooth, threading

The students also learned about the apps their senior colleagues built in previous years of summer school and during their diploma thesis. It was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know each other and to think about the project assignment. The materials created for the bootcamp can be accessed on the corresponding Google Code Page.

The students also had the chance of proposing their own projects and choosing their teammates. In the end, 6 projects were selected from mixed ideas, coming both from the organizers and the students:

• Robot Remote Control (Madalina Toia, Tony Dobre, Cristian Iliescu)
• EKG on Android Tablet (Andrei Iușan)
• Face Detection and Recognition (Ioan Deaconu, Cătălin Calotescu)
• Moodle Attendance (Adelina Vidovici, Răzvan Prejbeanu)
• AR Feature Detection (Melania Pătru, Andrei Vasiliu, Dragoș Săndulescu)
• AR Game with Markers (Ștefania Budulan, Andrei Tăleanu, Andrei Mușat, Ionuț Chelcioiu)

Work continues during the summer, even after the end of the summer school, at several of these projects, including Moodle Apps, AR Feature Detection and Medical Apps.

The 2012 NCIT Summer School reunited once again bright and dedicated students from all the years of study. The team building events (such as the weekend visit at an amusement park, sponsored by Google) as well as the bootcamp have been wonderful opportunities for students from different years of study to meet each other and socialize. We feel confident that their interest in mobile development is encouraged and bootstrapped into new and amazing projects.