As part of code.org‘s terrific “Hour of Code” week, Barrack Obama has called out youngsters to learn how to code. There are some great learning tools at code.org, including Blockly, Scratch, and App Inventor. The initial “Angry Birds” code challenges involving programming character’s movement through a maze is a great beginning to programming. My twelve-year-old son Tomas had a blast and learned a lot of programming (if, loops, complex logic, etc.).
App Inventor Answers the President’s Call
Learning to program a maze is great, but App Inventor stands out as a tool that actually lets you program your phone and build all kinds of apps. You can build apps that auto-respond to text messages or an app that with a single click sends “thinking of you” to a list of phone numbers; You can build apps that remember where you parked your car, or how far you’ve run. And you can build meaningful, media-rich apps such as an “I Have a Dream” app that plays the speeches of MLK and Malcolm X. Most importantly, you can share your apps with your family and friends because App Inventor works on the open Android platform.
The “I Have a Dream” screencast tutorial is below. If you have an Android, click on the link and follow along, and you can have a cool app downloaded within minutes. And you’ll learn enough programming to build your own apps of various types– the sky is the limit!
For more, see appinventor.org and MIT’s Hour of Code lesson.
Filed under: what is app inventor? | Tagged: android, app inventor, hour-of-code, programming | Leave a comment »
App Inventor Blog 