Category Archives: App Inventor News

Thunkable turns programming into a drag-and-drop solution – based on App Inventor

Thunkable is a spin off of the MIT App Inventor project. If you can program in App Inventor, you can program in Thunkable. Their goal is to get the App Inventor concept running on both Android and iOS (iPhone).

Visit Thunkable at http://thunkable.com

Thunkable, built on top of the open-source project MIT App Inventor, is a visual programming tool

Source: Thunkable turns programming into a drag-and-drop solution – SD Times

There are indications that MIT App Inventor will focus on education and training applications and that spin offs will offer more powerful (and likely complex) features such as increased database functionality or media handling. These new features, oriented perhaps towards businesses and organizations (rather than education) might become a subscription service – but with added value in terms of features and capabilities.

Interest in App Inventor continues to grow

The following chart comes from Google Trends, and reflects the growing interest in App Inventor, based on searches for “MIT App Inventor” on Google.

MITAppInventorTrend

Because App Inventor has been viewed as a training tool in K-12 level schools, and some introductory college courses, searches for App Inventor information have gone down during the northern hemisphere summer months, when school is not normally in session. This accounts for the up and down movement in the trend line.

This chart shows a relative level of interest for the top countries searching for “MIT App Inventor”.

Region

FIRST Tech Challenge (Robotics) can now use App Inventor

Early in 2015, FIRST announced that the First Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics platform would be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (the same processor used in most Android phones).

Starting with the Fall 2015 FTC competition, students can now control the robot using App Inventor. (Go here and page down to App Inventor Download and Resources and follow that link).

FTC uses a version of App Inventor that is installed on a local computer rather than running over the Internet, as we do with MIT App Inventor.

About FIRST

FIRST robotics is an “academic sport” for the mind as teams are faced with the challenge of conceptualizing, designing and building a complex robot to solve a challenge. The Mission of FIRST Robotics:

“Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”

Volunteering

I am in my 8th year of volunteering as an engineering mentor to high school robotics teams. I am currently a volunteer with Glencoe High School’s Team #4488 “Shockwave” team where I am the lead mentor for Apps Software. Our team is a student-led team. The students make the design choices and implement the solutions. The mentors assist with technical and management training and specialized learning.

Our team, like many FIRST teams, is run similar to a business with separate sub-teams not only for robotics (mechanical, electrical, robot programming, CAD) but also other functions (marketing, business, strategy, web and applications software, graphic design) and even an animation team. Our applications team produces support software for the entire team by creating custom tablet apps and Windows applications software that assist in various information collection, analysis and processing functions. Last year, the team also created a robotics game that is available in the Google Play store.

There are many opportunities for volunteering – from technical engineering to business and marketing, graphic and art design, wood and metal working, CAD, and teaching. Visit usfirst.org to learn more!

App Inventor course available in Spanish

Estructurado en 8 módulos y con más de 146 clases este curso es ideal para aquellas personas que, sin tener idea de programación, quieren tener un curso completo de App Inventor paso a paso y basado en la metodología de aprender haciendo.

Curso de Desarrollo de aplicaciones móviles Android con App Inventor

The 22 hour online course is offered through the udemy.com

(I did not make clear – sorry – this course is from Professor José Luis Núñez and he is offering it through udemy.com. I am not involved in this at all – just sharing the link – Ed)