Josh's blog

Technovation 2017 Workshop at MIT

Josh — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 21:27:19 +0000

On Saturday, January 23, 100+ people attended the MIT App Inventor session at the Stata Center at MIT to prepare for Technovation 2017. Huge thanks to the rest of the App Inventor team, including Lisa Yuan, Mike Tissenbaum, Paul Medlock-Walton, Jane Im & Marisol Diaz for their parts in making the day go so well. Special thanks too, to Rachel Nicoll and the others from MassTLC Ed Foundation for their help organizing the event, and many others to make Technovation in Massachusetts a success.

Feedback from 2016 told us that we should run several different levels of App Inventor sessions, not just one advanced session. So, this year, the sessions included a beginner and advanced session, to accommodate different amounts of experience with App Inventor. This, we hypothesized, would let attendees take away the more from the morning.

As it turned out, with both sessions running concurrently, people could move between them as they felt necessary, which people did quite willingly and without hesitation. An improvement for next year, though, would be to offer descriptions of each level ahead of time. The descriptions should include a description of the range of experiences, if any, needed for any session.

A small puzzle for future years remains, however. How can we appropriately differentiate within a session room for a group that you've never met before and may never meet again, that have very different experience levels, especially in the beginners session. A possible, partial solution, would be to have a very short survey ahead of time, asking 2 or 3 questions about programming experience.

Another interesting observation was that there were big differences between adult and youth comfort learning programming. True to form, adults were generally less comfortable not knowing things and just exploring, compared to kids who were willing to jump in and try different things without fear of breaking things. As well, teachers and non-teachers behaved differently. Teachers recognized they were there to facilitate and seemed to feel less worry about how much they did or didn't understand.

In the beginner room, most participants picked up programming with MIT App Inventor really quickly. This allowed time for teams to have the opportunity to share app ideas and then receive feedback from the room. Feedback came both on concept, and on how you might start planning implementations of some parts of the planned app with MIT App Inventor.

This feedback opportunity brought to light an idea, namely that good apps do need good programming, but that programming can often be the "easy" part. Another part that is often considered secondary, but often has even more impact than the programming is the social or information system that's built around the app. For example, an anti-bullying app to allow reporting of incidents may require some programming, but requires much more focus on the social engineering, or providing the right incentives to each group of users to use the app. A drought monitoring app requires programming, but more focus on where to get the information needed to inform stakeholders, i.e. app users, about the state of watersheds.

As the Technovation teams move forward with their ideas and coding of their apps, we hope that they, with the help of their mentors, will work to build the systems needs to make their apps and pitches successful and impactful in the world.

technovation-jan17.jpg

Genre:

Blog

New Release Features Extensions, Bluetooth LE & LEGO EV3

Josh — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 19:47:04 +0000

Late the evening of June 15, EDT, the MIT App Inventor team pushed a significant component release to its live, public-facing main instance. More information about the release is available.

This release enables extension components, which for now are non-visible components only, which may be written by anyone (with sufficient Java know-how) and then used with the MIT App Inventor service, without cluttering the component palettes for other users.

The first officially recognized & supported extension component is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) component, generously made possible in part by a grant given by the University Program Office at Intel Corporation. The BLE component will enable Internet of Things (IoT) applications, many of which will come from our community: we expect to be blown away by amazing examples!

Additionally, we are happy to announce and release LEGO EV3 components, generously shared with the wider community by CAVEDU, a robotics and computer education organization based in Taiwan, and workplace of Master Trainer David Tseng.

Genre:

Blog

Welcome 30 New Master Trainers in Mobile Educational Computing

Josh — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 16:20:45 +0000

We had an spectacular experience this past week – we had 30 people, from 18 countries, come together to be trained as MIT Master Trainers in Mobile Educational Computing (with MIT App Inventor), put together jointly with the MIT Professional Education Short Programs group.

Together with the amazing folks who’ve been master trainers with the Verizon program, we now have ~40 Master Trainers, & they are wonderful - we will soon have a full listing of these folks and their contact information so you can begin to take advantage of their awesome skills.

Huge thanks and congratulations to Karen Lang and Marsha Gordon and her Short Programs staff, all of whom did an enormous amount of work for this, and to Dave Wolber, who flew cross country and provided amazing guidance and instruction. Thanks as always to Hal, for his leadership and inspired opening talk. And of course, thanks to Jeff & Andrew for their presentations & answers to MANY questions. Thanks too, to Cynthia Solomon, for her inspiration, guidance, and thoughtful presentation. And without Marisol Diaz, we wouldn’t have had the logistics or amazing reception on Thursday evening. Finally, thanks to Mel Robinson for making sure all the final details were taken care of.

Genre:

Blog

Seeking Applicants for Positions on App Inventor Team

Josh — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 22:31:35 +0000

As part of a major initiative we'll be undertaking with collaborators from Hong Kong and sponsored by the generosity of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the MIT App Inventor team is seeking applicants for three new staff positions.

Though this post is mostly an update to Hal's notification of a few weeks ago, the jobs are now officially open in the MIT system and we are very actively seeking applicants:

Research Scientist (Job no. 13330)
Postdoctoral Associate (Job no. 13331)
Software Engineer (Job no. 13332)

PDF copies of the job descriptions are linked above for your convenience, but to apply, please go to http://careers.mit.edu/ and search by job number.

From Hal's earlier post, a bit more about the project:

Major computational thinking research project and new staff positions with MIT App Inventor

The MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is collaborating in an ambitious four-year research effort to explore the use Scratch and App Inventor to foster programming knowledge and computational thinking for students in grades 4 through 6. The work will engage 20,000 students from 32 Hong Kong primary schools and several community organizations. It is sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. Other collaborators are the Hong Kong Institute of Education, City University of Hong Kong and Dalberg Global Development Advisors.

As a result of launching this project, MIT has immediate full-time staff openings for a post-doctoral associate, an educational researcher and a software developer. This is a chance to contribute to a major research project on computational thinking aimed at significant impact in one of the world's great cities and beyond.

Genre:

Blog

MIT App Inventor Translated to Brazilian Portuguese

Josh — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 17:01:58 +0000

This is a guest post by Eduardo Valle

Eu sou professor de Engenharia de Computação na UNICAMP, uma das principais universidades brasileiras. Meus colegas e eu estamos trabalhando para tornar mais diverso o público interessado nas profissões de Ciência, Tecnologia, Engenharia e Matemática; em particular queremos atrair mais garotas para a Ciência e a Engenharia de Computação. Minhas colegas conduziram um programa piloto com o App Inventor com garotas de uma escola pública do ensino médio no Brasil e obtiveram resultados incríveis, demonstrando que mesmo com todas as dificuldades um caminho é possível. Durante esse piloto, identificamos que a língua inglesa é uma forte barreira de entrada para essas meninas, muitas vezes em situações sociais desfavoráveis.

Fazer a tradução sempre esteve no meu mapa, mas eu achava que fosse uma montanha para carregar, uma tarefa para uma equipe enorme, e adiava o plano. Até que resolvi aproveitar o recesso no fim de 2015 para enfrentar o rojão e descobri que era muito mais fácil que eu pensava: a equipe do MIT foi super prestativa, e eram só 12 mil palavras para traduzir, o tamanho de dois contos. Além disso um terço da tradução já estava pronto, contribuído por usuários que chegaram antes de mim. Em poucos dias a tradução estava feita.

Torço para que que a disponibilidade do App Inventor em português abra oportunidades para muitos professores, alunos, entusiastas, e hobbistas no mundo lusófono.

In English:
I'm a Computer Engineering professore at UNICAMP, one of the most important Brazilian universities. My colleagues and I are working to diversify the interest in the STEM professions, and in particular to bring more girls to Computer Science, and to Computer Engineering. My colleagues conducted a pilot program with App Inventor for girls at a Brazilian public school, and got amazing results, showing that despite all difficulties, there is a way. During the pilot, we identified English language proficiency as a big entry barrier for those girls, many of whom come from socially disfavored families.

Ever since, translating App Inventor was in my radar, but I was under the impression it would be a gigantic task, and kept postponing that plan. I decided to use my 2015 Winter break to finally bite the bullet and do it. Then I found out the task was much easier than I thought: the MIT team was super helpful, and there were only 12 thousand words to translate, the size of two short stories. Besides, one third of the words was already translated, contributed by previous users. The translation was accomplished in just a few days.

I hope that making App Inventor available in Portuguese will open opportunities for many Lusophone teachers, students, hobbyists and enthusiasts.

Genre:

Blog

iVolunteer for Chennai

Josh — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 16:34:41 +0000

Indian Youth Builds App to Mobilize Resources for Disaster Relief

When deadly floods hit the Indian city of Chennai (Madras) in early December 2015, the award winning app inventor, Arjun Kumar put on his inventor’s hat once again, to build his newest app, iVolunteer for Chennai.

Currently available in the Google Play Store, iVolunteer for Chennai coordinates aid between those offering aid and those in need of such aid.

We commend Arjun for springing to action and hope that his work and others’ use of his app will help the people of Chennai affected by the recent flooding.

iVolunteerLogo.png

MichelleSunBBC.jpg

Genre:

Blog

NSF Award to Team from Boise State to Research with App Inventor

Josh — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 20:51:54 +0000

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Yu-Chang Hsu from Boise State University

Our team at Boise State University is really excited to have been awarded a grant recently by the National Science Foundation. Our project and research focus on enhancing undergraduate STEM majors’ learning in mathematics, particularly trigonometry, through mobile app programming. Through our proposed project, we will develop and offer a one-credit course, Introduction to Mobile App Programming, for undergraduate STEM majors who concurrently take a trigonometry course. The enrolled students will collaboratively develop mobile apps by revisiting and applying mathematics knowledge during the programming processes. The mobile apps developed by students can serve as math review tools (e.g., quizzes or games) or help to serve as practical tools (e.g., measuring buildings height at construction site) for daily life or business.

The students can enhance and deepen their math learning by constructing tangible artifacts through collaboration with peers in class. Working toward a common outcome will also connect students and provide a space for complex problem-solving and discussions. This will not only help students review math for learning, but also help them see the value of what they have learned due to the real-world outcome and impact of the mobile apps they will be developing. We hope that our research on knowledge retention, motivation, and computational thinking can help provide the community useful insight into students’ learning processes. The curriculum and evaluation can also lead to implications for curriculum design for STEM learning, programming, and collaborative problem solving.

We are also very excited to incorporate App Inventor 2 into our curriculum for teaching mobile app programming through which students will strengthen their math learning. I have been collaborating with the App Inventor team and the Center for Mobile Learning at the Media Lab through various venues for a few years. I also have extensive experiences with App Inventor. I have taught the online graduate course on mobile app design at Boise State University since 2011. I have also taught app development to underrepresented students in face-to-face camp since 2011 by partnering with TRiO program at Boise State. I have been invited to present at the App Inventor Summit at MIT for three years in a row. I was also selected and invited to help coach the best-in-nation middle school and high school teams from the Verizon Innovative App Challenge in 2014 and 2015.

Over the past few years of teaching, I have received countless compliments from my students on App Inventor as a wonderful tool. Most of my graduate students are K-12 teachers on various subjects and they like how AI can facilitate their own thinking during their design problem solving. My students also see great potential of teaching mobile app programming with App Inventor to students in the classroom because the abstraction and algorithmic thinking the young students can experience by developing apps with AI.

With our offering of the new course for STEM students, there will be new app development tutorials and sample apps created with a focus on using math/trigonometry for programming. The educational resources generated from our project such as course modules and framework will also benefit the greater App Inventor education community. We also hope to share, through our research, about students’ experiences in developing math-related mobile apps this new course.

I look forward to learning and giving more through our wonderful App Inventor and STEM education community!

Yu-Chang Hsu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Educational Technology
Boise State University

Genre:

Blog

Reactions to a CS10k Webinar: Block Party

Josh — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 01:23:40 +0000

Note: This post is re-blogged from https://csforhumanity.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/reactions-to-a-cs10k-webinar-block-party/.

I write this without having listened to the recording of the first half of the webinar, “Block Party: Meet Some of the Creative Minds Behind Blockly, Scratch, and More!”, which took place live on the evening of October 7, 2015. I hope my reactions prove spurious after listening to the recording of the full webinar. I am afraid, however, they will not be. And at the very least, they reflect my experience. I hope they will resonate with some others, and encourage you to share your enthusiasm for computing with others.

I listened to, and participated in the chat for approximately the last 25 minutes of the event. There was certainly some interesting discussion, among some very enlightened and well- meaning people, representing thought leaders in Computer Science and/or Computing Education.

Given that, however, I cannot help but ask question: “Why did the majority of what I heard focus narrowly on how we teach what is often taken as a vocational skill, namely programming, most effectively?” There were a few half-hearted nods to computer science-specific formulations. The message I got loud and clear, however, was that we should figure out how can we get kids proficient in Java(script) as quickly as possible.

And it intrigues me that this ended up being the case. I know many of the people who participated, and they believe firmly in much more transcendent ideals. Why, one of the curricula based on one of these blocks languages is entitled “The Beauty and Joy of Computing.”

I recently had a small difference of opinion with Dr. Mark Guzdial on Facebook, in which I critiqued an article about new CS courses in Georgia for emphasizing only the vocational good they could do. His response, paraphrased, was “that’s often how these things end up getting sold.” Much more exclusively on that idea in another post, but to boil it down, there’s much more to computing and any of these languages, and we lose so much richness when we devolve into a discussion of optimizing teaching of programming.

I’m not saying anything particularly new, but computing to me is about much more than the act of programming. Programming is often the last stage of a bout of computing. First, we assess the problem in our head, devising a strategy to approach it. We (why “We” and not “I”? Because computing is rarely a solitary endeavor,) may discuss it with peers, we may sketch flowcharts or notes on whiteboards or in notebooks. We often search for facts and figures, data, that have nothing to do with computers, but about the real-world problem we are trying to solve with an application of computing. Using a variety or combination of methods, decomposition/solution of parts/reassembly; machine learning; data mining; etc., we plan, eventually program and test, then repeat to find better, and finally adequate solutions. This, for tonight, is my barely adequate description of an experience of computing.

Why the disparity then, between the possible discussion space and what ended up being talked about? Certainly it was not because the blocks languages that were being discussed are learning or play languages. Scratch and the languages that spawned from it scaffold creativity of several kinds. Alice and its relatives are also about self-expression, though with a slightly different flavor. Pencil Code, to my poor estimation, strives to give fast ability to control real tools. Admittedly, though, I’m biased, and know the most about about one particular tool, MIT App Inventor.

MIT App Inventor strives to give beginners and experienced programmers fast control over mobile devices (yes, still Android only) through high level abstractions that allow the app creator to do real, meaningful things. What does that mean? There are myriad examples, ranging from crowdsourcing access to sanitary toilets in Lagos, to developing apps for tracking student location on school and/or city buses, both domestically in the US and in Bangalore, among other locations. Are they all so goody-goody? No - kids (and adults) make fart noise apps too - and those are popular and exciting, and represent the thrill of computing as well - they allow the app inventor to make something that promotes cognitive dissonance - a phone farting!?! How much more fun, and relatively innocently disruptive can you get?

So, to close, let’s strive to elevate the discussion - let’s talk about the Beauty and Joy of Computing, farting phones and all. Let’s talk about why we love computing, and how programming enables that.

Somehow, with only a gut feeling to support this, I suspect that we should curtail our inclination to debate in the esoteric weeds the relative merits of one blocks-to-text conversion tool vs. another. Instead, let’s spend more time developing and telling the inspirational stories to pass to youth who may not hear them otherwise. Enthusiasm is contagious, sometimes… I’m convinced if we share our true enthusiasm for problem solving and computing, vs. vigorously discussing arcane points, we will share that youthful enthusiasm with a larger AND broader audience of youth.

Genre:

Blog

Exciting News from Boise State University

Josh — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 14:26:18 +0000

We just heard some very exciting news from our good friend Yu-Chang Hsu at Boise State University:

The National Science Foundation Directorate of Education and Human Resources has awarded Boise State University a $163,660 supplemental funding grant to support using App Inventor to help STEM students learn trigonometry by developing their own math learning apps through team-based learning.

The project title is, "Boise State University Pilot: Using Student-Developed Apps to Frame Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Learning." The interdisciplinary project team includes,

Doug Bullock (Department of Mathematics)
Janet Callahan (Department of Materials Science and Engineering)
Yu-Hui Ching (Department of Educational Technology)
Yu-Chang Hsu (Department of Educational Technology)

The students will learn to use App Inventor 2 to collaboratively develop apps that require applying trigonometry knowledge and help peers learn trigonometry. The students will use their own apps as refresher in the following advanced STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) courses. These apps will benefit the trigonometry class and other cohort of STEM students. The students will strengthen their math knowledge by applying it to app development with real-world impact, and engage in computational thinking as well as problem solving tasks.

Genre:

Blog

College Board Announces Endorsement of Advanced Placement Mobile CSP Course

Josh — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:27:09 +0000

Earlier this month, The College Board and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an extension of their partnership to support teachers and schools in offering the new Advanced Placement (AP®) Computer Science Principles (CSP) course in the fall of 2016. In their announcement, they endorsed the Mobile CSP course that uses MIT App Inventor, which was developed by App Inventor collaborator Ralph Morelli and his team, based at Trinity College.

Congratulations to the Mobile CSP team! Thanks to them, we anticipate many more students will hAPPily Invent for years to come.

Genre:

Blog