Democratizing Computing with App Inventor

Abstract

MIT App Inventor is a visual blocks language that enables beginners and non-programmers to create apps for their phones and tablets. It has empowered thousands to create software with real-world usefulness, and see themselves as creators rather than only consumers in the mobile computing environment. Educationally, it offers a "gateway drug" that can help broaden and diversify participation in computing education.

From Android games to coding in C—An approach to motivate novice engineering students to learn programming: A case study

“…The range of usages of App Inventor in education is very broad [37]. We can find reports on its successful usage with secondary school students (e.g., [17]), as well as university students (e.g., [36]).…”

“…MIT App Inventor is a very promising and widely used environment [38], initially developed by Google, and transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012. The range of usages of App Inventor in education is very broad [37]. We can find reports on its successful usage with secondary school students (e.g., [17]), as well as university students (e.g., [36]).…”

Measuring the usability and capability of App inventor to create mobile Applications

“…Reports on courses taught depict App Inventor being used to create very diverse apps. These apps range from programs that discourage texting while driving, to apps that track school buses [4], to apps that organize community service cleanups [5]. The pattern we observe is that App Inventor enables "situated computing" [6].…”

Android Device as a "Programmable" Sensor Module

“…Although Android devices are used in many academic settings 2,3,4,5 , they are used as general-purpose computers. Our work looks at an Android device from a different perspective.…”

“…A good alternative is the App Inventor framework, which is a simple graphic platform to build an Android app 5,11,12 . It was originally provided by Google and is now maintained by MIT.…”