MIT APP INVENTOR

1. App Inventor for Android
Do-it-yourself App Creation

2. Talk Outline
• App Development (iPhone/Android)
• App Inventor introduction
• App Inventor at USF
• Demo: No Texting While Driving
• App Inventor’s Secret Sauce
• What you can build

3. Smartphone market share

4. Market share w/newbies
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=25901

5. Developing Apps
• iPhone
– Objective C
– High level tools to turn pre-existing content
into an app. (e.g., http://www.appmakr.com/learn_more/)
• Android
– Java
– App Inventor

6. App Inventor
• Blocks language, like plugging in puzzle
pieces.
• Similar to Lego Mindstorms and Scratch
but for phones not robots
• “Hypercard” for mobile phones,
“electronic napkin” for prototyping apps
• Democratizes app building.

7. An App Inventor App
What do you think this app does?

8. The Brief History of App Inventor
• Summer 2009
– Hal Abelson of MIT
and Google
– Pilot program with 10
schools
– Public launch July
2010

9. Demo: “No Texting While Driving”
• Three windows of environment
• Change title, show in emulator
• Add label, textbox, button for custom
response
• Respond with a fixed message,test
• Use custom response of user
• Custom response for mom
• Speak it aloud

10. Why is it so easy?
• No syntax. The blocks language eliminates the need
to remember and type code
• Everything is right in front of you. Components and
functions are in drawers. Just find,drag, and drop.
• Events at top level. "When this happens, the app
does this" is the correct conceptual model.
• High-level components. The app inventor team has
built a great library with simplicity the main goal.
• Only some blocks plug-in. You can't do things that
don't make sense.
• Concreteness. Less abstract than many languages.

11. Apps students have built
• Quizzes, surveys, study guides
• restaurant guides
• Droid Where’s my car?
• Broadcast Hub
• Next Muni
• Games

12. What you can build
• Educational apps
– Including video, images, text-to-speech
• Location-aware apps
• Games
• NXT Robot Controllers
• Web-enabled apps
• Personal apps

13. Demo: Quiz App
• Lists for questions,answers
• Index to walk through questions
• Next button
• Checking the answer

14. Try It!
• Go to: appinventor.googlelabs.com
• Register and get started
– Download software
– Try HelloPurr app and other tutorials
– Use phone or emulator
• Help-- Wolber’s sites:
– appinventor.org
– appinventorapi.com (advanced)