Google App Inventor: The Application Revolution.

Google AppInventor is based on some incredible and groundbreaking educational work at MIT that goes all the way back to the ‘60s.  Computer Scientist like Ricarose Roque, Eric Klopfer and Mitchel Resnick developed methods of teaching computer science concepts with fun and simple interfaces.  Hal Abelson, a professor at MIT worked with many of those early concepts and the rebels that believed programming should be fun and easy to learn. When Hal took a sabbatical at Google he brought with him a wealth of experience that his work at MIT with teaching and learning programming had given him.  Building on the work of Mitchel Resnick and Scratch (a program to learn about programing  with visual blocks)  Hal begin to develop AppInventor. AppInventor allows Android Apps to be built and programed using colorful easy to understand building blocks. You will first add interface elements to your application such as buttons, images and sounds. Then you will add logic and actions with plain language instruction blocks that snap together like a child’s building blocks. Not only are the blocks color and shape coded they are logical. Like “when a certain thing happens do another thing” as you see below.

While you are adding visual elements and arranging programing blocks you can see the application actually running on your connected Android phone.
You will begin immediately in my book to program applications for your Android device. As you go through each project you will learn how computers and the Android operating system “think” in relation to you and your world. You will be learning how each activity takes place and what instructions are required to make them happen. Very soon you will be able to design and create your own applications.  Making applications with AppInventor starts out as fun and then quickly becomes a joyous creative process as you create and refine actual functionality on your own Android phone.

More indepth history to come.

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