AppInventor

I've always wanted to write an app, so I decided to check out AppInventor. AppInventor is a cloud-based app-development tool that was originally provided by Google, but is now maintained by MIT. The good news is, it's free; the bad news is that it's limited to Android operating systems - not a problem for me with my Samsung phone, but limiting in that half the population own Apple products.

AppInventor uses drag-and-drop blocks of code, so it is fairly easy to put together a working app very quickly. There are a multitude of tutorials on the AppInventor website, and what's nice about them is that they are actually useful and fun. One of the tutorials is for a map tour of Paris showing attractions like the Eiffel Tower. The tutorial shows you how to incorporate Google maps and even couple the app to your phone's GPS. I personally prefer the programming in the campus map tour I found on YouTube. I made a map of downtown St Louis using my Paint program. This .png file became the background image for my canvas. The little green question marks are sprites indicating interesting sites along the route. Every time you click on a question mark, the canvas visibility is turned off and a picture, address, and short description appears for that site.

I personally think this is a great teaching tool, especially for early learners. Students can program silly little apps, like petting a kitty or painting a mustache on a photo. I've heard a few students complain that AppInventor is boring, but I think that is coming from classrooms where the teacher sits the student in front of a computer with the tutorials and does not encourage (allow?) the student to explore some of the creative (do-it-yourself) challenges. My next task with AppInventor is to write an app to control my NXT robot.