1. FELS Mobile Learning Day - DIY Mobile Apps
Mobile apps can support different types of learning activity but not many mobile apps are
currently designed for higher education. Using Google Apps Inventor allows you or your
students to develop home made apps. This activity will explore why you might use Google Apps
Inventor and how you can use it.
What is App Inventor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_App_Inventor
App Inventor is an application originally provided by Google and now maintained by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. It allows anyone, including people unfamiliar with computer programming,
to create software applications for the Android operating system (OS). It uses a graphical interface,
very similar to Scratch and the StarLogo TNG user interface, that allowes users to drag-and-drop
visual objects to create an application that can run on the Android system, which runs on many mobile
devices. The application was made available through request on July 12, 2010, and released publicly on
December 15, 2010. Google terminated the App Inventor on December 31, 2011. MIT Center for Mobile
Learning is now supporting it under the name "App Inventor Edu".
How do I get it?
App inventor is available from: http://www.appinventor.mit.edu/
This site has three sections:
Explore: http://explore.appinventor.mit.edu/ Blog, forums, user stories
Teach: http://teach.appinventor.mit.edu/ Teaching materials
Invent: http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu The actual development envvironment
The development environment comes with a set of documentation, including guides and
tutorials: http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/
Editing a user interface is done on-line, but in order to download your app to a phone, you will
need to install the desktop component: http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/setup/index.html
The easiest way to get started is by following the “HelloPurr” tutorial:
http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurremulatorpart1.html
http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurrphonepart1.html
http://cs.usfca.edu/~wolber/appinventor/bookSplits/ch1HelloPurr.pdf
Questions?
Yishay Mor, Yishay.Mor@open.ac.uk