Android 1: Seminar Background for King Naresuan University Kirk Scott 1

1.1 Introduction 1.2 Who Is the Audience? 1.3 The Example App 1.4 Summary 2

1.1 Introduction 3

This is a brief outline of the seminar on Android apps for education at King Naresuan University Day 1 Morning: An introduction to Android apps Afternoon: A Java program to help make an Android app 4

Day 2 Morning: Google Play and publishing Android apps Afternoon: Google Play for Education 5

Each of the four sessions will be broken down into 3 PowerPoint presentations on different topics These PowerPoint presentations will last approximately 45 minutes, leaving time for translation, questions, etc. The seminar will consist of a total of 12 separate presentations 6

There are two basic goals to the seminar: Give information on the creation of a simple, educational Android app Provide general information on how apps are sold and distributed, and Google’s initiative for apps in education 7

The goal of the initial sets of overheads: Introduce the sample app Give some general background on Android 8

1.2 Who Is the Audience? 9

This seminar has been designed for students of education who are interested in educational technology Android apps are based on the Java programming language The assumption is made that the audience does not know how to program 10

No attempt will be made to cover the topic of programming Instead, the goal is to discuss app development to the extent possible without programming 11

Someone who is specializing in educational technology should find the first day’s presentations of particular interest Such a person would be familiar with and comfortable with installing and using computer applications and development packages The overheads will contain information that would allow those people to support teachers who want to make an educational app 12

Someone who is not specializing in educational technology will find the first day to be background information The result may simply be to draw the conclusion that you will need the help of an educational technologist to accomplish these things 13

The second day will be more general information An educational technologist would be interested in the technical aspects A regular teacher would be interested in the capabilities that are being supported by Google and Android 14

1.3 The Example App 15

The first day of the seminar will be centered around a flashcard app The app consists of a series of screens which show questions and pictures The user can press buttons to see the answers and hear sound associated with the question The user navigates from screen to screen by pressing buttons 16

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, the complete sequence of screens is shown on the following overhead 17

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Needless to say, this app is very simple in concept It would be useful in educational situations where memorization is the goal All that’s necessary is to provide suitable content Students would be motivated to use it because it is interactive and works on a portable device 26

The basic framework, or skeleton for the app is the programming That work is complete The text, pictures, and sound, the contents of the app, are known as resources 27

The goal is to show how to use the finished program framework for the app and include personalized content in it Even though providing the resources isn’t programming, it turns out that there is lots of background knowledge needed in order to do even this 28

The idea is that a classroom teacher may have ideas about content and would be able to assemble the necessary materials Someone skilled in educational technology could then help them put that content into the sample application framework 29

What the programming defines is the logic of the progression through the flashcards In other words, what happens when you click different buttons, and where are the resources displayed in the flashcards? 30

The content consists of the text, pictures, and sound that are included In short, without programming skills, you have to accept a rigid sample app which effectively does only one thing But providing content for this can be a creative and useful activity 31

It is not hard to see how the flashcard app could be expanded and improved in many different ways However, this can’t be accomplished without programming skills 32

1.4 Summary 33

The goal of this seminar is to give students of educational technology and students of education some background in Android app development With a sufficient level of technical skill, it should be possible to populate the sample flashcard app with unique, subject-specific content 34

It should also be possible to get an idea of the broad scope of Android as it might be used in education 35

The End 36