MIT App Inventor

Wednesday 12 July 2022

I worked with John Gates to deliver a team teaching presentation using MIT App Inventor and with his background in behavioral therapy and my skills with technology we were able to successfully get our classmates into the software and creating apps using tutorials. The foci of the lesson were cultivating Creatively Focused Technology Fluent (CFTF) Mindsets, app building, and mindful minimalism.

Affordances and Constraints

We recognize the following as affordances of the MIT App Inventor:

The tool is online, cloud-based, and free
It’s easy to sign up for an account
There are several tutorials available that show how different features work
Since it uses a Graphic User Interface (GUI) as its means of programming it takes out the confusing mechanics of many programming languages

We have all heard some variation of "There is no light without the dark" and this lesson is no exception. Here are the constraints we found for this tool:

It only works on Android phones at this time
It has an emulator but we were unable to get it to work
If the internet where you are keeps going out, you can’t really use it
The drag-and-drop mechanics are the only way to interact with the GUI to place components (cannot double-click to place parts - is not the most accessibility-friendly)

Why this lesson?

The graph that follows shows confidence levels in learners for their technology skills. We would like to highlight that of all of the included skills on this graph "Creating a Smartphone App" is at the bottom of the scale of learning confidence in their skill-level. Minimalism made sense for us to use here when we consider that Carroll (1990) said, “Adult learners are not blank slates; they don’t have funnels in their heads; they have little patience for being treated as 'don’t knows;"

(Henriksen, Mehta, & Rosenberg, 2019)

Startup Walkthrough

Video Transcript

0:00 - okay super quick walk through of the hello app so we got a button we put the button on there

1:16 - we go over to the properties side we find image it says none we go we click on none we click on upload file

1:24 - choose file um i gotta go to where i had this which is

1:33 - downloads and we're gonna taking let's

1:39 - picture i am recording by the way uh

1:46 - we're going to select the kitty picture we're going to hit ok uh right now it still has text on the button we're going to remove that text

1:54 - so that it's not covering the face of our beloved captain clauda um we're going to add a label

2:03 - to the screen and change that click the

2:10 - image

2:22 - so we have text um we are going to go back to the left side click on media

2:30- click on sound add that to the screen um

2:36 - source is going to be an upload file choose file and these come from the original tutorial so i'm clicking on the meow

2:46 - audio which is an mp3 file and it shows up there okay

2:54 - and it's there so that's all the components we need to add to the front of the screen so we're going to go into the blocks editor which

3:00 - is the programming code and let's see what did we need

3:09 - i'm gonna go button and when you click on button it brings up all the options of the event handlers that you can add to

3:16 - to the app so when button one click which is where the picture of the cat is located you drag and drop that into the blocks

3:24 - editor so that's the event handler or the the trigger i guess and then we'll go with

3:33 - sound we click on the sound that's the meow sound and we're going to play when we click on it

3:42 - and that's it okay so we've added the sound we're

3:50 - gonna play the sound um you can also as part of the sound library of uh events that you can add there's a

3:58 - vibrate for and you can set the milliseconds on it so that clicks in that goes with the button click

4:06 - um and let's see so you do need to add a milliseconds component because it uh

4:14 - you need to set how much time it's going to be um doing that event and

4:21 - numbers are under math it it's a little puzzle piece that you can add on to the end here and it snaps into place and i'm just going to do 500

4:30 - milliseconds so that's like a half second and that's it oh let's not

Resources

Henriksen, D., Mehta, R. & Rosenberg, J. (2019). Supporting A Creatively Focused Technology Fluent Mindset Among Educators: Survey Results from a Five-Year Inquiry Into Teachers’ Confidence in Using Technology. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 27(1), 63-95. Waynesville, NC USA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education. Retrieved July 12, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/184724/.
Carroll, J.M. (1990). The Nurnberg Funnel. Cambridge , MA: MIT Press.

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