The following resources offer different approaches to teaching App Inventor. All include either written or video video tutorials, and many examples of App Inventor in action. While none offers a complete curriculum, they are often a useful resource for finding extension activities and challenges, and other approaches to teaching computer science concepts with App Inventor.
Royal Society of Edinburgh: I Love My Smartphone
(Updated in 2016) This resource seeks to consolidate previous concepts through the medium of mobile app development. In addition to providing a course in programming for mobile devices, it will explore new paradigms in computing e.g. mobile technologies and new interfaces, and provide ample opportunity for inter-disciplinary linkage.
- Mobile App Development Tutor Pack
- Mobile App Development Learner Pack
- Mobile App Development Apps
- Mobile App Development Screencasts part 1
- Mobile App Development Screencasts part 2
- Mobile App Development Screencasts part 3
- Mobile App Development Media Files
Appiventor.org
AppInventor.org is a site for learning and teaching how to program mobile apps with MIT’s App Inventor. These tutorials are refined versions of the tutorials that have been on the Google and MIT App Inventor sites from App Inventor’s inception– thousands of beginners have used them to learn programming and learn App Inventor.
This site is also designed for use by teachers. The teaching materials here have been used as a basis for numerous middle school, high school, and college courses. The course-in-a-box, which is based on Professor Dave Wolber’s USF courses, provides structure and material to get a new course up and running within days.
Your guide in these pursuits is David Wolber, Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. Wolber began teaching App Inventor as part of Google’s 2009 pilot program and has taught more App Inventor courses and workshops than any human alive. His USF course, “Computing, Mobile Apps, and the Web”, has served as a model for teaching non-CS-majors and interesting them in computing. His students are mostly humanities and business majors with no prior programming experience.
MIT App Inventor
MIT App Inventor is an intuitive, visual programming environment that allows everyone – even schoolchildren – to build fully functional apps for smartphones and tablets. Those new to MIT App Inventor can have a simple first app up and running in less than 30 minutes. Even more, the blocks-based tool allows anyone to program more complex, impactful apps in significantly less time than with more traditional programming environments. The MIT App Inventor project seeks to democratize software development by empowering all people, especially young people, to transition from being consumers of technology to becoming creators of it.
Unlike other blocks-based coding programs that inspire intellectual and creative empowerment, MIT App Inventor also enables real empowerment for kids to make a difference — to achieve social impact of immeasurable value to their communities. In fact, App Inventors, in school and outside of traditional educational settings, have come together and done just that.
Technovation
Technovation offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the necessary skills to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders.
Girls ages 10 to 18 learn to identify a problem in their community and create a mobile app solution to address that problem, and then learn how to communicate these ideas and translate them into a fully launched business.
*You need to register with Technovation to gain access to their App Inventor curriculum.
Source and Attributions: All Images, Text and Content Created by Appinventor.org, appinventor.mit.edu, The Royal Society of Edinburgh and Technovation.