App Inventor for Android

Do-it-yourself App Creation

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

Smartphone market share

Market share w/newbies

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

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.

An App Inventor App

What do you think this app does?

App Inventor at USF

CS 107: Computing, Robots, and the Web.− 4th semester teaching App Inventor− Now 2 sections

Students’ work cited in SF Chronicle,NY Times, Techcrunch, Wired, …

Wolber authored App Inventor tutorials• O’Reilly Video series Co-authoring book

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

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.

Apps students have built

Quizzes, surveys, study guides USF restaurant guides Droid Where’s my car? Broadcast Hub Next Muni Games

What you can build

Educational apps− Including video, images, text-to-speech

Location-aware apps Games NXT Robot Controllers Web-enabled apps Personal apps

Demo: Quiz App

Lists for questions,answers Index to walk through questions Next button Checking the answer

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)

Take CS 107 (and send students!)