It is the damndest hackathon coding workshop you’ve ever seen. There is music. Loud Music. Hip Hop. Dance a little, sing a little, create an app! There are basketball hoops, low for dunking (even low enough for an old has-been). Hoop it up, app it up! There are colorful murals. There is barbecue. Eat a bit, code a bit. And the barbecue is out of control good!
Kids coding, and Rafael Cosman teaching, at the Street Code academy Kickoff event
There are black people. And brown people. People of all colors. Silicon Valley meet East Palo Alto. This is the Street Code Academy Kickoff event.
There are kids. All ages. There are Moms and dads. Families. Having fun and learning to code and create. Design the Future, say the T-shirts. They will and they are.
The kids are smiling, learning, having fun, proud. Empowered is a big word but you see it in the kids faces. Look what I can do!
Some kids spent 11 hours on the day hacking. A girl named Harshita Gupta from Mission San Jose High met with the Mayor and prototyped an app for East Palo Alto residents to report trash/graffiti (she’s spending her thanksgiving week off working no it!) Kids worked with Arduino boards, App Inventor, Wix, Photoshop, and just about every technology you can think of.
Google and Facebook, your numbers on diversity are awful. Street Code Academy is the change you envision. Check it out!
The academy is run by young visionaries: Rafael Cosman, Olatunde Sobomehin, Shadi Barhoumi. They are techies but they are experts in what kids like. They are coaches and cheerleaders and mentors. There is no kid that could resist Olatunde’s call to arms! Rafael’s energy is infectious. Shadi is everywhere. These guys are on to something big.
Support the Street Code Academy!
The music was off the charts
Best barbecue ever and 100 times better than any previous hackathon event
Olatunde Sobomehin inspired young and old
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I teamed up with App Inventor creators Hal Abelson (MIT) and Mark Friedman (Google) on the article, “Democratizing Computing with App Inventor”, which was recently published as first education column in the inaugural issue of Get Mobile ( from ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review). Hal and Mark developed App Inventor from the ground up at Google. Hal continues to lead its development at MIT with Mark contributing significantly. The article introduces App Inventor and its history, and tells some of the great success stories.
What: The First MIT App Inventor App Contest. Prizes, Fame, Fun!
App Inventor Blog 
