Explore MIT App Inventor - Curriculum

Building Mobile Applications (6.S063, Spring 2013) Hal Abelson, MIT

shay — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:49:13 +0000

This is a project course about mobile applications for education. The focus is empowering kids and beginning programmers to create their own mobile apps using MIT App Inventor. AppInventor is a cloudbased development environment where people quickly create apps for Android devices by plugging together program blocks with a graphical user interface. It runs as a free worldwide service with about 30,000 unique active users a week about half a million users total. In this course, you'll work with App Inventor both as a user and as a system developer.

We'll focus on new ideas that demonstrate the potential of mobile computing, and we'll explore these ideas by creating working prototypes. You will implement several prototypes over the course of the semester in projects that span the spectrum of mobile computing: standalone disconnected apps, multiperson games and other shared apps, clients for web services and databases, and interfaces to instruments and sensors.

Projects may be individual or team projects; you will be involved in both types during the semester. You'll start by creating your own educational apps, working in App Inventor. Then you'll implement your own extensions to the App Inventor system, programming in Java with the Android SDK, and you'll demonstrate these extensions with new educational applications. Some projects will include backend integration with web services and databases. You'll build those back ends using Google App Engine and programming in Python.

Resource URL:

Course Website

Grade Level:

Undergraduate

Difficulty Level:

Advanced

Subject:

Computer Science
Entrepreneurship

Resource Type:

Curriculum

Computing, Mobile Apps, and the Web (CS 107) David Wolber, USF

shay — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:45:37 +0000

Taught by Professor David Wolber at the University of San Francisco, this course offers an introduction to computer science for nonmajors with little prior programming experience. Students develop programs using visual and highlevel programming languages to control robots, create animated simulations, and build Internet and general applications. In addition, students are exposed to an overview of computing and its influence on modern society.

Resource URL:

Course Website

Grade Level:

9-12
Undergraduate

Difficulty Level:

Basic
Intermediate

Subject:

Computer Science
Entrepreneurship

Resource Type:

Curriculum

App Inventor Code Snippet Cards

joanie — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 21:00:32 +0000

Anshul Bhagi, as part of his thesis, created this deck of 20 cards, each containing a bite-sized snippet of blocks code to help students learn programming concepts through App Inventor.

See Also: App Inventor Concept Cards

The topics of the Code Snippet Cards are:

Defining and Using Variables
Properties, Functions, and Events
Moving Sprites with Button Clicks
Defining and Calling Procedures
Implementing Jumping and Gravity
Moving Sprites with Clocks
Using AnimatedSprite Component
Moving Sprites with Accelerometer
Detecting if Phone is Close to Objects
Touch Events on Canvas and Sprites
Playing Sounds in your App
Detecting Fling Gestures
Layouts and Centering Components
Generating Random Numbers
Collision Detection
Detecting if Phone is Shaking
Creating your own Colors
Speech Recognition
Drawing on the Canvas
Working with Lists of Components

Resource URL:

App Inventor Code Snippet Cards

Grade Level:

6-8
9-12
Undergraduate

Difficulty Level:

Basic

Subject:

Computer Science
Math
Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum

App Inventor Concept Cards

joanie — Wed, 29 May 2013 19:37:01 +0000

App Inventor Concept Cards provide a quick way to learn new App Inventor code and concepts. Each of the cards can be printed out, folded in half, and used to prompt students to explore a concept in App Inventor such as timers, sounds, movement, math, multi screens, making colors, etc. These cards are designed to introduce ideas to students in bite-sized snippets and can be worked into any lesson or tutorial.

You may download all of the cards at once in the multi-page pdf.

Individual Cards:

If you're interested in making your own Concept Cards, download the template as a word document or png image. Please share your cards with us! You can send them as an email to aiwebreview [at] mit [dot] edu.

Resource URL:

App Inventor Concept Cards Multipage PDF

Grade Level:

Difficulty Level:

Basic

Subject:

Math
Science
Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum
Tutorial

AppInventor Concept:

SpeechRecognizer
OrientationSensor
Animation Components
Button
Canvas

Dutch App Inventor Curriculum

shay — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:45:24 +0000

Eindhoven University of Technology graduate students Robin Eggenkamp, Coen Crombach and François Vonk developed these course materials for App Inventor. The materials are in Dutch and targeted at high schools. The materials are shared under a Creative Commons license on Github: http://appinventor.informatica.nu. The authors invite feedback, as they continue to develop the materials while using them in their own classes.

Resource URL:

Dutch App Inventor Curriculum

Grade Level:

9-12

Difficulty Level:

Basic

Subject:

Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum

CS Principles for High School Teachers (Scratch + App Inventor)

shay — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:24:36 +0000

This 4-week summer graduate course "CS Principles For High School Teachers" was offered during the summer of 2012 to math teachers enrolled in John Carroll University's graduate program. The course material is available online.
Professor Linda Seiter writes: "We spent the first week on Scratch and the remaining 3 weeks covered App Inventor. The final project required each teacher to develop a lesson in either Scratch or App Inventor that they would potentially use to help them teach a math/computing topic to their high school students. Links to their lessons can be found at https://sites.google.com/a/jcu.edu/mt513/project/student-project-links They each got to teach their lesson in class the last week of the course."

Resource URL:

MT 513 Scratch and App Inventor Course for Teachers

Grade Level:

Master's and Above

Difficulty Level:

Advanced

Subject:

Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum

Introduction to Software Application Development with App Inventor and Python

shay — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:09:37 +0000

Professors Linda Seiter and Victor Lee developed this introductory computer science for students at John Carroll University. The course starts with App Inventor and then transitions to Python.

"The course web site has the daily lessons, weekly 2 hour labs that occur outside of lecture, and the homework assignments to date. We use App Inventor for the first half of the cs128 course. In the past we would switch to Java mid-semester. This year we will be experimenting with teaching Python rather than Java for the second half of the course." -- Linda Seiter

Resource URL:

Go to the course website to view the syllabus (lessons, labs, and homework assignments)

Grade Level:

Undergraduate

Difficulty Level:

Basic
Intermediate

Subject:

Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum

Middle School Tutorials: Ball Bounce App

shay — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:09:35 +0000

Middle School teacher Richard Incorvia has put together some simple, easy-to-follow tutorials for teaching App Inventor to students. These can be used with older students as well.

He has created eight days of lessons with a tutorial for each day. Each tutorial includes a guide to building the app in the Designer and Blocks Editor, making the app, and additional challenging features to add.

Day One walks students through building an app with a moving ball that bounces off when it comes to an edge. Day Two introduces buttons to change the ball's speed. This is an excellent introductory lesson for students because it lets them see immediate effects of their program changes in the app's behavior. Day Three teaches students about if-statements by guiding them on how to build a calculator app. Day Four guides students through uploading media (sounds, pictures, videos, etc) to their phone by building the classic App Inventor app: HelloPurr. Day Five guides students through the PaintPot event teaching them about Events. Day Six teaches about using the Clock's Timer functionality by using the MoleMash tutorial. Day Seven instructs on how to use the TinyDB component by guiding users through a ToDoList app. Day Eight teaches students about using multiple screens by guiding them through a Music Player App.

Resource URL:

https://sites.google.com/site/middleschoolandroid/home/app-inventor-tutorials

Grade Level:

Difficulty Level:

Basic

Subject:

Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum

AppInventor Concept:

Animation Components
Button

Android Game Development with App Inventor, by Anshul Bhagi

shay — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:38:16 +0000

Ever since App Inventor found a new home at MIT's Center for Mobile Learning in early 2012 (it was previously housed at Google), it has been receiving significant attention from educational communities that hope to use the tool to facilitate technology learning in the classroom and beyond. Much of App Inventor's current user base is teachers in high-schools and colleges, and as the tool continues to attract more users, it is likely that many of these users will be teachers of students in grades 3 thru 12 (i.e. students who are old enough to know how to use computers and design/develop apps, yet not experienced enough to get their hands dirty with the Android SDK). Students of this age group are quite fond of gaming, and so we anticipate that there will be a strong demand for developing graphically appealing, interactive single-player and multiplayer games using App Inventor in the coming years. It is therefore important that the App Inventor team at MIT prepare for the imminent growth of the App Inventor game development community. Accordingly, this thesis looks at where App Inventor currently stands with respect to game development and how its game development capabilities can be improved and extended.

Resource URL:

Download Paper (PDF)

Grade Level:

6-8
9-12
Undergraduate
Master's and Above

Difficulty Level:

Basic
Intermediate

Subject:

Computer Science

Resource Type:

Curriculum
Paper

Technovation Challenge Curriculum

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 08:46:17 +0000

This 10-part curriculum from the team at Iridescent Learning is designed to engage high-school girls in entrepreneurship and programming. The first five sessions focus on specific concepts and "hacks" or tutorial walk-throughs, while the last five sessions are dedicated to designing and building an App for the final "pitch night" competition. Girls work in groups of 4 or 5 with one adult female mentor.

The rationale behind the Technovation curriculum "Why Mobile? Why App Inventor?" offers a concise overview of the attractiveness of mobile technology to young women, and the "low floor, high ceiling" characteristic of App Inventor as the development tool.

Resource URL:

Iridescent's Technovation Challenge Curriculum

Grade Level:

9-12

Difficulty Level:

Intermediate

Subject:

Computer Science
Entrepreneurship

Resource Type:

Curriculum