1. Google Workshop: App Inventor Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year (Alabama, 2008) University of Alabama Department of Computer Science gray@cs.ua.edu http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray University of Alabama July 26, 2011

2. Overview Sample outreach activities  Science Fair project examples  Summer Camp Summary App Inventor CS Unplugged Location of resources for today  http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray/outreach/google-cs4hs/ http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray/outreach/google-cs4hs/

3. Motivation: Teaching CS – 1980s style Typical example was text-based, trivial, and uninspiring

4. Motivation: New and Exciting Contexts Media Computation (Georgia Tech)  Programming in a more exciting context by manipulating images and sounds Robots  Lego NXT 2D/3D Animation Environments  Alice, Scratch, AgentSheets

5. Motivation: Newest Context Teen cell phone adoption at 84% March 3, 2011  Android marketshare (29%) passes Apple (27%)  Android sales soar 888% Social networking and crowd sourcing a daily activity Increasing adoption of smartphones in science and medical applications

6. App Inventor Overview URL: http://appinventor.googlelabs.comhttp://appinventor.googlelabs.com Purpose  Teaching  Prototyping Components of App Inventor  Designer GUI builder  Block Editor Provide behavior behind the GUI Based on MIT OpenBlocks and Scratch

7. App Inventor Overview

8. Installing and Running http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup /index.html#setupComputer  Requires Java 1.6  Install App Inventor setup App Inventor environment loads in a web browser  Login using Google account Run from a phone or the Android emulator Stores programs in the cloud

9. Designer Provides a WYSIWYG editor for designing the visual parts of the app Also provides ability to attach non-visual components

10. Blocks Editor Provides an ability to give behavior to an app; the programming part Typical and expected basic predefined constructs (logic, conditionals, iteration) Ability to refer to the components and their properties from the Designer Very similar to Scratch  Built on Open Blocks library from MIT

11. Limitations File I/O Custom objects Printing your code! Reliability

12. Examples Many tutorials available:  Developed by Dave Wolber (Univ. San Francisco)  http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/tutorials/index.html Standard Google Kitty app (embarrassing!)  http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurr emulatorpart1.html http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurr emulatorpart1.html Other Examples  Where’s My Car, No Text While Driving

13. CS Unplugged URL  http://csunplugged.org/ http://csunplugged.org/ Free Book  http://csunplugged.org/sites/default/files/activity_p dfs_full/CS_Unplugged-en-10.2006.pdf Overview of Unplugged Activities  Error Correction (lead-in from Google Magic Trick)  Binary Numbers (and WHY they are important)  Sorting  Searching  Compression