Lenovo and NAF launches pilot program to teach app programming in high schools

Interested in learning how to program Android (no love for iOS or Windows Phone?) apps? Well if you are, the good news is that Lenovo, together with the NAF (National Academy Foundation), are spearheading a new effort that will be bringing in a “mobile application development” curriculum to high school students within the NAF’s network. At the moment five high schools have been chosen to receive this new curriculum, although the NAF aims to bring it to their entire network of schools over time.

However it should be noted that the curriculum does not appear to target every high school student, and will instead be geared towards students in NAF’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program, which we guess kind of makes sense since we can’t expect programming to be everyone’s cup of tea.

The initial five schools participating in this new curriculum includes Apex High School’s Academy of Information Technology in Apex, N.C., Grover Cleveland High School in New York City, Downtown Magnets High School in Los Angeles, Pathways to Technology Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., and A.J. Moore Academy of Information and Technology in Waco, Texas.

Lenovo’s part in this new program will be providing the hardware necessary to facilitate the learning. The company will be providing students with Android-based ThinkPad tablets and large format ThinkCentre HD All-in-One desktops among other items. Sounds pretty interesting, not to mention exciting. Who knows, perhaps one of these students could come up with the next Angry Birds!