Explore MIT App Inventor blogs

Hour of Code with App Inventor

shay — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 21:50:12 +0000

Code.org and the Computing in the Core coalition are coming together to provide an array of "Hour of Code" activities for this year's Computer Science Education Week taking place on December 9 - 15, 2013.

We are pleased to be offering new tutorials in the form of short, user-friendly videos that anyone can follow to build their first mobile apps. Check out the preview of our Hour of Code!

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Announcement

SIGCSE App Inventor Workshop - Atlanta, GA March 5-8, 2014

shay — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:24:13 +0000

The Computational Thinking Through Mobile Computing project, funded by NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM, is pleased to be invited to host a workshop at SIGCSE this coming March. More information on this 3-hour hands-on workshop on App Inventor 2 will be forthcoming. Watch this space for updates!

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Event

URBAN Txt Students Using App Inventor

joanie — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:34:59 +0000

The URBAN TxT (urban Teens eXploring Technology) program seeks inner-city south L.A. students from 7th to 11th grade with an interest in technology and exploring more about. Many of these kids have parents who didn't attend college or even graduate high school. The URBAN TxT program has been incredibly successful. Each of the 15-week summer terms start with an intensive course in team and leadership building.

“What I’ve found so fascinating is that the tech is just a tool to turn our teens into the leaders we know they can be,” Juan Vasquez, technology mentor at URBAN Txt, says. “It’s not really about the tech. It’s about how we get these kids to understand that they can go out and eat up this world … how we can tell kids ‘you’re meant to succeed … you’re built to succeed.’”

After these kids are taught how to be leaders and work on a team, they are introduced to HTML, CSS, and Javascript using a variety of online courseware. Once they are equipped with the foundational skills, they target problems in their communities that they're passionate about solving. After identifying these problems, the students are provided with mentors and volunteers whose goal is to help them explore different technologies that can be used to create the solution.

Some of the final projects students have created are: L.A. Volunteers, a sort of Match.com for teens — who need volunteering hours for high school graduation credits — and local charities and nonprofits, who need help and SAT Fighter (which students built using MIT App Inventor), a ninja-fighting game that helps teens prepare for their SAT tests.

Students of the program present their projects to everyone participating in a final demo day where they can win up to $3000 in prizes.

“Just seeing the hunger he has to compete in the world … that’s what I want every kid to have,” Vasquez says.

Read the original article at: http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/22/apps-in-the-hood-taking-south-l-a-kids-from-homeless-and-failing-to-stanford-and-princeton/

App Inventor Boot Camp in Western Mass

joanie — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 14:44:18 +0000

App Inventor Boot Camp was a summer professional development experience for teachers to learn MIT App Inventor, a free visual blocks-based programming system for Android mobile devices that can be used to teach computer science concepts through the creative design of apps for smartphones and mobile devices. In this hands-on workshop, educators built their own apps and explored how to integrate app programming and computer science principles into their curricula in computing, technology, science, and math classes. The workshop included time to develop curriculum exercises and share them with colleagues, as well as begin to build a learning community of educators using App Inventor.

Starting Tuesday, August 13, 2013 at 8:30 AM until Friday, August 16, 2013 at 1:00 PM, teachers gathered at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center for an App Inventor Boot Camp: a 4 day workshop geared on teaching teachers about App Inventor and computational thinking. Mark Sherman, PhD candidate at UMass Lowell and part of the MIT App Inventor Training Corps led the workshop with assistance from myself and James DeFilippo and Rajia Aziz: both undergraduates at UMass Lowell in the Engaging Computing Group.

A photo of the instructors (minus Rajia who had to leave early) of the Bootcamp.

About 15 educators participated in the Boot Camp, including teachers and professors from middle schools, high schools, and even colleges. Participants had a mix of backgrounds, from very strong programming experience to none at all. But by the end of the bootcamp, everyone was able to build apps and understand basic computing concepts by using App Inventor.

A photo of all of the teachers and instructors from the last day.

As part of a project to get participants using App Inventor and integrating the tool and computing principles into different content areas, participants sorted themselves into groups of 2-3 and made an app for an infusion activity. Each app needed to serve an educational purpose that combined App Inventor and the computational thinking it affords with another subject area. Participants also wrote worksheets that complemented the apps. Some of the apps were: a College Tour of Western Mass colleges, a Physics app about gravity on Earth and other planets, a growing a plant app that teaches a bit about plants, a Spanish teaching app, an app that teaches and tests reading a ruler, and an app that teaches about computer/technology costs. All the apps, with source code and descriptions can be found in the App Inventor Gallery.

Two of the infusion apps that participants in the Boot Camp created

Overall, it was a great experience, learning and teaching App Inventor. Thank you so much to MGHPCC for hosting and for CAITE and ECEP for sponsoring. And thanks again to MIT's App Inventor Group and UMass Lowell's Engaging Computing Group for providing the instructors.

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Blog

Event

Want to Contribute to App Inventor's Educational Resources?

joanie — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:07:41 +0000

We'd love to share your tutorials or other resources with the App Inventor community. To get started creating your own tutorials, check out the How To Create Your Own Tutorial page. If you'd like to create a Concept Card, use our Concept Card template. For these and any other resources you'd like to share, feel free to send them to

with a description of the resource with the resource as an attachment. Thanks and hope to hear from you soon!

Chicago Summer of Learning features App Inventor

joanie — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 20:00:43 +0000

This summer of 2013, thousands of young Chicagoans will continue learning while school is out, thanks to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s citywide Chicago Summer of Learning initiative, the largest coordinated summer learning effort in the country. Summer of Learning will specifically focus learning activities around science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. The City of Chicago teamed up with the MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla to be the first city to pilot a citywide digital “badge” system that visually represents and rewards students’ achievements. The badges in the Chicago Summer of Learning will recognize learning across all of the summer programs in the initiative, whether at a park, museum, library or online course, giving learners digital credentials that communicate the skills that they have developed. The badges the youth earn will unlock additional learning opportunities and challenges. All of the badge information can be carried back to schools and job fairs during the school year. These badges are earned by completing activities in various pathways available from the Chicago Summer of Learning hub site. App Invention using App Inventor is one of these pathways.

Arun Saigal and I went out to Chicago to lead a few workshops to Chicago youth and mentors who are part of this summer's Chicago Summer of Learning. Some of the students involved with CSOL come to the drop in center located at DePaul University every day for a Digital Divas program run through the Digital Youth Network. Others come every week wth their summer camp through the Chicago Park District. Some students are not involved in any camps but interested in learning as much as they can over the summer. Here are some photos from our workshops.

If you're interested in learning more about Chicago Summer of Learning, check out the homepage.

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Blog

Democratizing the mobile world with MIT App Inventor

leoburd — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 17:17:45 +0000

Built with the mission to democratize app creation for and by all, MIT App Inventor is a graphical tool that turns media consumers into active and critical participants of the mobile world.

As portable devices become ubiquitous, mobile apps are the new Web. Literally bringing data and connectivity to our fingertips, apps are increasingly becoming our primary entryway to local news, weather and market reports, email, digital books, movies, interactive games and socially-relevant information.

But like in the early days of the Web, when site creation required highly specialized skills, app creation is still the domain of a small elite of programmers and designers. This is where MIT App Inventor comes into play.

By combining visual LEGO-like blocks together on the screen, App Inventor users, even those with no programming experience, can create apps for health, entertainment, education, business and anything else that comes to mind.

Programming with App Inventor is like combining LEGO blocks on the screen

App Inventor is currently being taught by universities, schools and community technology centers around the world. As part of those initiatives, students not only acquire important technology skills such as computer programming, but also have the opportunity to apply computational thinking concepts to science and other meaningful contexts. Examples of student projects include a mobile app to educate women about the Pap test, systems to support grassroots organizations in Haiti, and games to foster healthy lifestyles. Outside the formal academic realm, App Inventor is being used in youth programs to engage underserved girls with careers in science and technology, in massive open online courses to foster mobile workforce development and entrepreneurship throughout Latin America, and in many other initiatives.

High school girls creating an app as part of the Technovation Challenge

The brainchild of MIT Professor Hal Abelson, App Inventor started as a collaboration with Google in 2009. In late 2011, the project came to the MIT Center for Mobile Learning and was released as free and open source a few months later. Currently, App Inventor has over 900,000 users and has spawned nearly two million projects.

Although those numbers are already impressive, the MIT Center for Mobile Learning is now working to reach out to a much larger fraction of the 5 Billion mobile phone users of the planet. In order to do so, the next version of App Inventor is going to bring a more intuitive interface and will be available in multiple languages besides English.

Still, much more will be needed to turn App Inventor's democratizing potential into reality. The example apps listed above are a good starting point, but they are still a minority. From a technology perspective, if the plan is to support the creation of personally and socially meaningful apps for and by everyone, we will have to make sure that App Inventor provides the core building blocks for the most desired projects and is friendly enough for people to feel comfortable using those blocks.

However, even with usability improvements, the process of creating apps is not a trivial one. It requires individuals to conceptualize their new app, put together a simple prototype, test it out and repeat the process until they are happy with the outcome. Part of that can be done in isolation, but it is most likely to happen when inventors-to-be are provided with the proper space, orientation and nurturing environment of a local group.

In a way, none of those technical and non-technical tasks can or should be done by MIT alone. In order to be successful, they will depend on strong collaborations among technical education institutions and field organizations that assume true ownership over App Inventor, make sure it enables relevant projects in their region, and support their long term sustainability. A few of these collaborations are already happening, but we need more.

This blog entry is an invitation to all who are interested in democratizing the apps creation world. If you are an educator, check the App Inventor tutorials and resources on the website. If you are a software developer, join the App Inventor Open Source group. If you have specific questions or are already doing related work in the field, just send us an email!

Note: this entry is a cross-post from the mEducation Alliance blog: http://www.meducationalliance.org/blog/democratizing-mobile-world-mit-ap...

App Inventor featured in CSTA Voice

shay — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 19:34:33 +0000

Creative Engagement with Technology: There's an App for That!

I recently teamed up with CS teacher Kristin Violette to write an article for the July issue of CSTA Voice. In the article we chronicle how Kristin's students at Newtown High School in Connecticut have used App Inventor to forge a personalized connection between CS and their local community. Kristin and I will be presenting at the CSTA Annual Conference in Quincy, MA on July 16th. We hope to see you there! Read the full article...

Read the full article...

$200K Keck Grant for Appinventor.org

caitlin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:32:29 +0000

David Wolber and the University of San Francisco received a $200,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to launch the Democratize Computing Lab at USF . The Lab’s mission is to break down the programmer divide and radically broaden and diversify the pool of software creators. The Lab will be using App inventor to allow beginners to build useful apps within days and experience the joy of computing and real-world problem-solving.

Wolber has been involved with App Inventor since its inception at Google in 2009, and co-authored a book with App Inventor creator Hal Abelson and two of the Google engineers on the App Inventor team (including Mills College professor Ellen Spertus). His site appinventor.org, which provides video lessons and course materials for students and teachers, recently received its millionth hit.

The Lab is involved with a number of App Inventor education projects for providing beginners with an entry-way into the world of programming. Wolber and his students are completing and refining the “course-in-a-box” materials for students and teachers on the appinventor.org site. They’re also working with MIT and UMass-Lowell on the App Inventor Community Gallery, a site where students, teachers, and developers share apps and learn from each other.

Wolber will continue to direct the Lab in the fall while on Sabbatical at MIT, where he’ll be serving as a visiting faculty member and working with Hal Abelson and the App Inventor team.

Join the App Inventor Community Gallery!

caitlin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:36:16 +0000

The App Inventor Gallery is now open to the world at gallery.appinventor.mit.edu. Show off your apps. Find apps for remixing. Learn from others and collaborate! The gallery is an open-source app store, a collaborative development environment, and a peer-to-peer learning studio, all in one. Teachers, students, and app developers: make the gallery part of your app inventing!