MIT App Inventor is an online platform designed to teach computational thinking concepts through development of mobile applications. Students create applications by dragging and dropping components into a design view and using a visual blocks language to program application behavior. In this chapter, we discuss (1) the history of the development of MIT App Inventor, (2) the project objectives of the project and how they shape the design of the system, and (3) the processes MIT uses to develop the platform and how they are informed by computational thinking literature. Key takeaways include use of components as abstractions, alignment of blocks with student mental models, and the benefits of fast, iterative design on learning.
A CSCL perspective on real-time classroom data This special issue on real-time orchestrational tools for CSCL classrooms arises from both a need and an opportunity. Increasingly, CSCL classrooms are turning toward open-ended inquiry learning, in which students' trajectories can be divergent and unanticipated. At the same time, classroom sizes are expanding beyond what many teachers can reasonably manage. The task of knowing how and when to provide timely and specific guidance is becoming increasingly challenging for teachers (Dimitriadis 2012; Tissenbaum and Slotta 2015; Roschelle et al. 2013). Particularly in CSCL classrooms, teachers must monitor group progress on time sensitive tasks, coordinate students' changing group roles, provide group and individual guidance and assessment, and differentiate resources to groups that are working in tandem (Tissenbaum and Slotta 2015; Dimitriadis 2012). To support their students' growth, teachers must quickly access and interpret data on their students' learning (Kuhn 2005; Shute 2008), and make decisions about how to guide them both conceptually and logistically (Dillenbourg et al. 2009; Dillenbourg 2011; Schwarz et al. 2018). Yet, typical assessments do not provide teachers with the information that they need to address students' learning in a timely manner, and that would impact those students' outcomes (Pellegrino et al. 2001). Meanwhile, dashboards are now common features of most learning platforms. These digital displays of data streams and feedback loops typically offer overviews of learners' states and interactions after they have completed classroom activities (Verbert et al. 2014). While these are valuable for informing curricular adjustments between classes, they do little to help instructors with the many real-time tasks of teaching with technology (Baker and Inventado 2014). In contrast, real-time dashboards offer data on activities as they are occurring. This
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.