I jumped on the AppInventor bandwagon at a workshop at SIGCSE 2010 and believed that my students would really enjoy building apps for Android phones as much as I did. My experience is that students (of all ages) get excited when their program makes a physical object actually do something. So, later that school year, I introduced AppInventor to my students after the AP exam and tasked them to design an app of their choosing for their end-of-year project. I thought this would be a good way for them to put what they’ve learned all year to good use. My school finishes up the school year around the third week in May which is not too long after the AP exam. Unlike many AP teachers around the country who give extensive post exam projects, we just don’t have that luxury in my school district. A short AppInventor project seemed to be a good fit for the limited amount of time we had.
This year is a different story. As my school wraps up just eight school days after the AP exam (and this includes four days of final exams), there will not be enough time for the introduction of this tool as well as time to do any significant application development. I was in the middle of a summer camp working with students and AppInventor when I realized that I could incorporate small AppInventor projects throughout the school year to complement the topics we are learning in Java. The students will then have the opportunity to design their own applications from the ground up for their end-of-semester project and experience a taste of what software engineers do:
* brainstorm an idea for a program based on a perceived need,
* determine what functionalities the program should have,
* design the user interface, test and debug the program, solicit feedback from users, and
* revise the program as necessary.
Contextualized approaches to learning programming are not new, but I haven’t found anything that jazzes my students as much as AppInventor has.
In addition to complementing many of the topics in the AP curriculum, I am hopeful that designing real-world mobile applications will help students understand that computer science is more than just programming. I want them to see the creative side of the discipline. I want them to experience the software development life cycle. And, more importantly, I want them to have fun!
Ria Galanos
CSTA 9-12 Representative