App Inventor for Android

App Inventor for Android is an open-source web application originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which allows newcomers to computer programming to create software applications for the Android operating system (OS).

It uses a graphical interface very similar to Scratch and the StarLogo TNG user interface, which allows users to drag-and-drop visual objects to create an application that can run on Android devices. In creating App Inventor, Google drew upon significant prior research in educational computing, as well as work done within Google on online development environments.[1]

App Inventor and the projects on which it is based are informed by constructionist learning theories, which emphasizes that programming can be a vehicle for engaging powerful ideas through active learning. As such, it is part of an ongoing movement in computers and education that began with the work of Seymour Papert and the MIT Logo Group in the 1960s and has also manifested itself with Mitchel Resnick's work on Lego Mindstorms and StarLogo.[1][2]

App Inventor also supports the use of cloud data via an experimental FirebaseDB component.[3][4]

History

The application was made available through request on July 12, 2010, and released publicly on December 15, 2010. The App Inventor team was led by Hal Abelson[1] and Mark Friedman.[5] In the second half of 2011, Google released the source code, terminated its server, and provided funding for the creation of The MIT Center for Mobile Learning, led by App Inventor creator Hal Abelson and fellow MIT professors Eric Klopfer and Mitchel Resnick.[6] The MIT version was launched in March 2012.[7]

On December 6, 2013 (the start of the Hour of Code),[7] MIT released App Inventor 2, renaming the original version "App Inventor Classic"[8] Major differences are:

  • The blocks editor in the original version ran in a separate Java process, using the Open Blocks Java library for creating visual blocks programming languages and programming
App Inventor Classic Blocks Editor

Open Blocks is distributed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) and is derived from master's thesis research by Ricarose Roque. Professor Eric Klopfer and Daniel Wendel of the Scheller Program supported the distribution of Open Blocks under an MIT License.[2] Open Blocks visual programming is closely related to StarLogo TNG, a project of STEP, and Scratch, a project of the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group. App Inventor 2[8] replaced Open Blocks with Blockly, a blocks editor that runs within the browser.

As of May 2014, there were 87,000 weekly active users of the service and 1.9 million registered users in 195 countries for a total of 4.7 million apps built.[citation needed]

As December 2015, there were 140,000 weekly active users and 4 million registered users in 195 countries, run total of 12 million built applications.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Hardesty, Larry (August 19, 2010). "The MIT roots of Google's new software". MIT News Office.
  2. ^ a b "On the Shoulders of Giants!". Google. Archived from the original on August 11, 2010. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
  3. ^ "The FirebaseDB Component (Experimental)". ai2.appinventor.mit.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  4. ^ "Brief introduction to cloud data and the FirebaseDB component". Google Docs. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  5. ^ Wolber, David; Abelson, Hal; Spertus, Ellen; Looney, Liz (May 2011), App Inventor for Android: Create Your Own Android Apps, O'Reilly, ISBN 978-1-4493-9748-7
  6. ^ "App Inventor @ MIT".
  7. ^ a b Clark, Andrew (December 30, 2013), App Inventor launches second iteration
  8. ^ a b App Inventor Classic, December 3, 2013

External links