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Google Workshop: App Inventor
Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate ProfessorCarnegie Foundation Professor of the Year (Alabama, 2008)
University of AlabamaDepartment of Computer [email protected]://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray
University of AlabamaJuly 26, 2011
Overview
Sample outreach activities Science Fair project examples Summer Camp Summary
App Inventor CS Unplugged
Location of resources for today http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray/outreach/google-cs4hs/
Motivation: Teaching CS – 1980s style Typical example was text-based, trivial, and
uninspiring
Motivation: New and Exciting Contexts Media Computation (Georgia Tech)
Programming in a more exciting context by manipulating images and sounds
Robots Lego NXT
2D/3D Animation Environments Alice, Scratch, AgentSheets
Motivation: Newest Context Teen cell phone adoption at 84% March 3, 2011
Android marketshare (29%) passes Apple (27%) Android sales soar 888%
Social networking and crowd sourcing a daily activity
Increasing adoption of smartphones in science and medical applications
App Inventor Overview URL: http://appinventor.googlelabs.com Purpose
Teaching Prototyping
Components of App Inventor Designer
GUI builder Block Editor
Provide behavior behind the GUI Based on MIT OpenBlocks and Scratch
App Inventor Overview
Installing and Running
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/index.html#setupComputer Requires Java 1.6 Install App Inventor setup
App Inventor environment loads in a web browser Login using Google account
Run from a phone or the Android emulator Stores programs in the cloud
Designer Provides a WYSIWYG editor for designing the
visual parts of the app Also provides ability to attach non-visual
components
Blocks Editor Provides an ability to give behavior
to an app; the programming part Typical and expected basic
predefined constructs (logic, conditionals, iteration)
Ability to refer to the components and their properties from the Designer
Very similar to Scratch Built on Open Blocks library from MIT
Limitations
File I/O Custom objects Printing your code! Reliability
Examples Many tutorials available:
Developed by Dave Wolber (Univ. San Francisco) http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/tutorials/index.html
Standard Google Kitty app (embarrassing!) http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/
hellopurremulatorpart1.html
Other Examples Where’s My Car, No Text While Driving
CS Unplugged URL
http://csunplugged.org/ Free Book
http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_pdfs_full/CS_Unplugged-en-10.2006.pdf
Overview of Unplugged Activities Error Correction (lead-in from Google Magic Trick) Binary Numbers (and WHY they are important) Sorting Searching Compression
