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 Inventors 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

OReilly 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 Wheres 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-- Wolbers sites:

appinventor.org
appinventorapi.com (advanced)

Take CS 107 (and send students!)