App Inventor Blog

The great team at Technovation is giving a workshop this summer for teachers. Here’s the info:

Technovation for Teachers: Summer Institute to Teach App Inventor

The Technovation Challenge has been teaching high school girls how to build mobile phone apps using App Inventor since 2010. Why should the girls get all the fun? Technovation is expanding to teachers with their first ever Summer Institute in Silicon Valley.

This week-long Technovation bootcamp will teach participants all stages of the app development process from the entrepreneurial process to design thinking to using App Inventor. Teachers can get CEUs for participating. 

Teachers will leave with thorough knowledge of App Inventor, an app prototype, and the tools and curriculum to teach App Inventor in their own classroom (and maybe even set up a Technovation club!).

When: July 30- August 3
Where: Silicon Valley
Cost: $400

Learn more: www.technovationchallenge.org

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Anaya Multimedia has created a Spanish translation of our App Inventor book. Here’s the Amazon link: http://amzn.to/n3i6Pa.

I also found this Spanish App Inventor resource site: https://sites.google.com/site/appinventormegusta/. Check it out!

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Mitch Resnick will be teaming up with Hal Abelson and Erick Klopfer on the App Inventor project at the new MIT Center for Mobile Learning. This development is great for many reasons, one being that Mitch is an expert on building community and sharing within a development tool.

Mitch’s Scratch system is one of the greatest sharing sites– open source software sites– in the world. Community is built into the very core of the  system and sharing is the default behavior. The motto is Imagine. Program. Share. Building something from example is the norm.

Such a scheme is especially important for kids and the non-geeks who inhabit the App Inventor world– its much easier than starting with an empty canvas or an empty text editor. Hell, its really best the way for hard-core geek programmers to work as well.

The current version of App Inventor has no sharing facility: its really a wonder that App Inventor flourished without it. Resnick’s influence will ensure that the community sharing is integrated directly in the workflow.

What’s it all mean? Are kids the only ones who buy into this sharing stuff? Can Resnick get adults to play together as well? I believe the answer is yes. People– kids and adults–love their phones. The lucky ones with tablets are obsessed with those as well. Most have never imagined that they could actually program these devices. App Inventor makes that possible, but it needs a community to foster it. Resnick may be just the guy to turn these phone lovers into the world’s greatest app building collaboratory.

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MIT announced the launch of the new Center for Mobile Learning. The Center’s first activity will focus on App Inventor for Android! The center will be led by App Inventor mastermind Hal Abelson, Mitch Resnick of Lego Mindstorms and Scratch fame, and Eric Kopfler, the director of teacher education at MIT and an expert in games and simulation. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

Dr. Maggie Johnson, Google’s Director of Education and University Relations, sees the Media Lab initiative as the ideal next step for App Inventor. “Google incubated App Inventor to the point where it gained critical mass. MIT’s involvement will both amplify the impact of App Inventor and enrich the research around it,” said Johnson. “It is a perfect example of how industry and academia can work together effectively.”

This news boomerangs the negativity surrounding Google’s discontinuation announcement last week. To the many teachers whose curriculums have been energized by app inventor, and to the thousands of newly empowered app builders: Rejoice! The fun has just begun!

Update: Hal Abelson discusses the move at Google Blog. Google is helping fund the center.

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