Creating Mobile Phone Applications and Motivating Females in CS with Google’s App Inventor for Android

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Official Program Description

Google App Inventor for Android (AIA) is a visual programming environment for creating mobile phone applications, designed with the goal of making Computer Science attractive to students not motivated by existing offerings. Attendees will get hands-on experience with AIA, led by presenters who are developers of AIA and have successfully taught it to girls and college women, enabling attendees to evaluate the use of AIA in their own outreach.

Contents

Before the workshop

In order to have access to App Inventor for Android, which is not yet open to the public, workshop attendees will need a Google account. If you do not have one, you can create one for free at http://www.gmail.com [1]. Send email from the account to aia-configuration@google.com [2] requesting access by Friday, September 24.

To participate, you need to bring your own laptop to the working session, which must have a recent web browser (Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 3.6+, Safari 5+, Chrome 4+) and Java runtime environment (JRE 1.6/Java 6) and wireless Internet access (provided). This page [3] has information on testing your Java configuration.

If you have an Android phone (NOT REQUIRED) and wish to develop on it during the session, bring your USB cable and set up your laptop and phone beforehand, following the instructions at http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/index.html [4].

Questions should be directed to aia-configuration@google.com [5].

Slides

Some images had to be removed and the file converted to PDF to upload this file to the site. Contact Ellen Spertus if you need them in another format.

For more information

App Inventor for Android

Sources of APIs

Forums

Resources

Additional Session Notes

AppInventor - just released for a limited beta started in mid-July.

UI: AppInventor Beta Logic: Blocks Editor Blocks Editor has built in blocks and your own custom blocks can be added. Blocks fit into each other like a jig-saw puzzle. Interesting visual development environment [based on MIT's Open Blocks system]

If a phone is connected to the computer, it will update components as they are added. To download the app, you would need to make a package for phone - show a barcode, download from phone etc.

If you don't have a phone - you can use the emulator (downloadable)

Demo: HelloPurr
Demo: App that automatically responds to texts while you are driving

- Good to show the end product (app) that you are creating so that students ahve a better idea of what they are doing. - Standard libraries, possibility to add more soon - tinydb is persistent over invocations of the app

Education: Dr. Ellen Spertus talks about - Smartphones are really transforming lives in africa and the rest of the developing world. A single mobile phone in a village can increase the wealth of the village many times over. - App Inventor fron tend, App Engine back end, Presentation on the web

Final Projects: - Radio Station Interface - Apartment finder - Flash card tool - Oakland crime information - Pregnancy information

Did this course change the way you think about CS? - Not just numbers - CS affects more people originally thought and is used in almost every field

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