Karen's blog

Tackling Trash with App Inventor at TechBoston Academy

Karen — Wed, 15 May 2019 16:46:28 +0000

On April 22, 2019, over 85 students from TechBoston Academy presented their STEAM projects at MIT’s Stata Center. TechBoston Academy is a Boston Public School that has a collaboration with STEAM Studio and the MIT Edgerton Center. This year, TechBoston Academy has been piloting STEAM Studios with 9th grade students. The project the students engaged in was to enact a 21st century method of change to address a community issue of their choice. Solutions were in the categories of Artistic Expression, Building a Movement, Building Technology, and Policy and Journalism.

Calvin, one of the students, chose to tackle the topic of trash in his neighborhood. “I wanted to help my community because I feel like if we don’t keep our streets clean, the areas overrun by trash might be seen as a slum or as a hood and I don’t want my community to be perceived like that.” Hence, for his project, he used MIT App Inventor to create an app where anyone could input the location where they saw trash in the neighborhood. Calvin envisions high school seniors cleaning up the neighborhood to get community service or partnering with a company to clean the trash. His instructor, Aaron Zaubi, runs the Engineering Lab at TechBoston Academy and said, “I was excited to see Calvin really take ownership of the space and his project. And when he got to work with outside organizations who were able to support him further, his project really took off.” Calvin now is looking forward to the next STEAM project, making a working functional model of a telegraph.

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Hacking School System with App Inventor at Preface

Karen — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 19:26:52 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Anna Yu

Recently we sat down with the February Winners of Nomad Hackathon and interviewed them about the experience of learning how to code at Preface using App Inventor and Scratch. Their responses resonate greatly with our belief in the importance of the right approach in teaching.

Nomad Hackathon is a monthly coding event in which the young coding students in Preface create useful apps using App Inventor and Scratch for the local community. In February, we witnessed two groups of coding students transforming into product makers. Brandon, Sik Kin and Macarius teamed up and created a loyalty app using App Inventor, while Jacqueline created an interactive translation app with Scratch.

The Beginning

(From left to right) Brandon Chan, Sik-kin Chan and Macarius Chan are the brains behind the Preface Coffee Loyalty App

Brandon, Sik Kin and Macarius have been coding for years now. None of them were older than 10 years old when they first started coding. “I was five when I started learning Scratch,” smiled Brandon. At the age of 10, he has already coded up more apps than an average adult in Hong Kong.

Both Brandon and Macarius started coding because they wanted to have their own creations. “I liked to play video games a lot, and I was very curious about how to make one myself. That’s why I really wanted to learn coding, but then my day school doesn’t really teach us that. We learn how to use powerpoint instead,” Brandon continued.

The First Challenge

It’s a big problem that the local school system sees as non-existent. While there is some form of computer classes at school, it hardly matches the learning needs of school kids. “My school doesn’t provide any coding classes until I get older,” Jacqueline explained why she started coding at Preface because of the lack of access.

In the February Hackathon, Jacqueline Ngai made a translator app that uses the Text-to-Speech and Translate components from Scratch, challenging the status quo of the monotonic translation products in the market

Even when there’s a class, it still doesn’t guarantee a chance to learn. “The coding projects at school are sometimes too easy. By the time the teacher finished explaining what the project is, I have already done most of the codes for it,” shrugged Macarius.

Tackling the Challenge

The average class size of a day school in Hong Kong is 32 kids, all with different personal experiences, interests and needs in learning. The challenge for a teacher to ensure the teaching quality and class engagement is monstrous and, as a matter of fact, unrealistic. “The class is too big and the teacher cannot answer every question we have. At Preface our group class has only two to three kids. Our teacher never fails to answer our questions,” Brandon said.

“At school we learn to use App Inventor too, but the classwork is too easy for me; at Preface projects are much more fun and the teachers are very helpful - they teach us how to find the answer ourselves instead of telling us the answer straight away,” Sik-kin put his shyness away with excitement when he talked about the games he built with App Inventor at Preface, such as “Space Shooting Fun” or “Farming Role Play”.

“We learn really fast while making these fun games,” Sik-kin continued, “we like the challenges.”

Hacking Education with Hackathon

While they learn how to solve problems independently in regular classes, our coding students learn to collaborate and leverage each other’s strength to take on a challenge together during Nomad Hackathon. “I’ve never missed a single Hackathon after I started having coding classes here. I want to see what other kids are doing and learn from them,” said Brandon.

The high relevance of the Hackathon projects to real-life problems is proved very effective in motivating students to use what they’ve learnt to make a real difference to their community as well as their learning progress. When they can practise what they learn in real life situations, it is much more valuable for their learning than a simple exercise or exam that only challenges their short-term memory.

Coding is a brand new subject for young kids; it requires a brand new approach in delivering the know-how. The century-old setup of an overcrowded classroom is failing hard as our new generation of learners has told us.

Getting the approach right is half the battle done; at Preface we place a strong focus on the approach in order to motivate students to learn and self-learn. We keep our classes small, our projects relevant, and our students highly engaged. At the end of the day we give them a stage - the Hackathon event is not just another coding class; it is a platform for the young students to prove to themselves - and the community - that they have learnt something mind-blowing.

Sik-kin concluded our conversation with a big picture of himself in the future, “I want to be a professional coder when I grow up, and teach young kids about coding with what I know from my years.” Although Sik-kin is only 10 years old now, his vision doesn’t seem too far-fetched for us. We are certainly confident that our young coding kids will give back to the community in their own ways in a not-so-distant future.

Congratulations to our February Hackathon Winners again!

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Combining Coding and Psychology to Create Societal Impact

Karen — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 21:46:34 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Queena Ling

Like many budding psychology students, Suki has a strong desire to aid those with special needs or suffering from mental health problems. Unlike her fellow psychology students however, Suki has taken her aspirations to the next level with her new mobile application - a mental health application built through App Inventor that aims at helping people combat depression.

Aided by a fundamentally sound coding skillset learnt through Preface NOMAD, the pioneer coding school in Hong Kong powered by A.I. technology in teaching, Suki has created a fully functional health application complete with an impressive range of features, including music to calm users and use of the web browser component to host web articles to motivate users, and educate them on how to overcome depression. A high school student with ambitions to study psychology at UCLA, Suki wishes to she can positively impact the mental health community in spite of her young age.

Suki hopes that adults and teenagers alike can find the perfect tool that they can draw strength from through her application, and hopefully empower them in their fight against depression.

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Starting Coding from a Young Age

Karen — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 23:29:45 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Anna Yu.

The first Preface Hackathon of 2019 started off with a bang, as Preface coders aged 9-12 aimed to build on their past year of creating impactful applications for the community. The past few months saw Preface coders design impressive applications ranging from local Geostories to event countdown timers. January was no different, as they bustled around with an abundance of passion and inspired minds, striving to utilize TinyWebDB and Variables components to build an online item trading platform.

The event also celebrated the winning coders from November’s Hackathon, as Hector Lo, Hilary Yum and Edison Fu of Team Black saw their game-based discount application officially uploaded to the Google Play Store. Built for local snack store Cameo’s Kitchen, the game offered discounts for food at Cameo’s in accordance with how well players completed particular challenges. The application was a success, not only giving Cameo’s Kitchen a further attraction in line with its delicious snacks, but also a platform for increased customer interaction.

The key attraction of the Cameo’s Kitchen discount application is its motion sensing ability. Named “Cameo’s Kitchen Tilting Game”, the game enabled users to control components of the game through tilting their devices. This was something our Scratch coders strived to emulate in their own Hackathon, as they took full advantage of Scratch’s new extension “Video Sensing” to create an interactive Lai-See collection game capable of tracking motions of players to score points! The recent upgrades coupled with its development as MIT software, exhibits Scratch as an ideal stepping stone to App Inventor by allowing kid coders to have a taste of app design and development.

Age doesn't matter in the world of coding - rather it’s the inherent creativity and the thought process that counts. These kids showed that given the right tools, even a six year old can build an application that can wow entire audiences.

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African Union CIEFFA Stem Ambassadors Get Introduced to MIT App Inventor

Karen — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 22:13:12 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Evbi O"Sullivan

African Union International Centre for Girls and Women Education in Africa (AU/CIEFFA) is the arm of the African Union entrusted with promoting girls and women’s education across Africa. In November 2018, fifty-five high achieving young persons from 45 countries across Africa were invited to a 4-day youth capacity building workshop on entrepreneurship, coding and STEM in Hamammet, Tunisia.

Day three of the workshop included an introduction to coding with scratch and MIT App Inventor. The App Inventor session was facilitated by Evbi O’Sullivan an MIT App Inventor Master Trainer and founder of Kodamind.org in association with UNESCO-YouthMobile. Youth Mobile is a UNESCO initiative set up to leverage the mobile phone as learning tool for computer science and coding education. The aim of YouthMobile is to teach young people to create apps for sustainable development with an ultimate goal to reduce the inequalities in access to digital resources and bridge the digital gender gap.

The MIT App Inventor Session kicked-off with a crash course on computational thinking. A role play scenario on how to solve a unique problem; program a robot (human volunteer) to carry out functions unfamiliar to it. This provided an opportunity to visualize and apply some concepts of computational thinking. It was a thought provoking experience for the STEM ambassadors as they were forced to think about solving a problem they had never experienced before and to think in ways they have never done before. They were then introduced to the use of MIT App Inventor as a valuable tool to learning the concepts of computational thinking.

The session logically moved on to practical use of MIT app inventor by building a functional app. The stem ambassadors were introduced to the designer and blocks editors of app inventor and proceeded to develop a translation app using step by step instructions. Despite the initial challenges experienced by first time users of app inventor, the session ended with the development of working translator apps.

There was great excitement when the apps were tested and the stem ambassadors who spoke a variety of languages including English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic could use the apps they had just built themselves to communicate with their fellow participants.

The stem ambassadors also recognised the benefits of MIT App Inventor as a useful tool for entrepreneurship to move an idea from concept to prototype in quick time and went away with a zeal to find out more about MIT App Inventor.

Dr. Rita Bissoonauth, the co-ordinator of AU/CIEFFA declared in her closing remarks her desire for the STEM ambassadors to imbibe the mind-set of being not just consumers of technology but becoming creators also, affecting positively their lives and communities. MIT app inventor is a valuable tool that can make that happen.

Evbi O’Sullivan @evbioo

Links:
www.cieffa.org @au_cieffa
www.unesco.org/youthmobile @youthmobile_
www.kodamind.org @kodamind

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Joy of Coding

Karen — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 21:34:07 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Ming Wu

After the coding class, my ten year old boy praised: “Mom, you did it!”. "Are you proud of me?" I asked him immediately. “Yes, I am”. He replied with a radiant smile that warmed my heart. All the hard work paid off when seeing young people passionate and eager to learn to code.

Today, we kicked off our first free coding class at Agnew H Johnson school. We were overwhelmed with twenty-one enthusiastic coders. In the App Inventor Creator class, it was the students first time to learn to use App Inventor to create apps. We first discussed why young people should learn to code. What is coding? Many students shared their thoughts about coding and understand the benefit of taking coding classes. During the class, students logged in with Gmail accounts or an anonymous account. We learned how to setup MIT AI2 companion on the tablet/phone. We explored the programming environment of App Inventor, such as User interface controls, Viewer, Properties, and Blocks Editor. Our first app was Talk to Me. Students played with the app on the Phone, then followed the instructor, step by step to create the app. The first version of the app uses a button and TextToSpeech control. When clicking on the button, the phone will say a message. After coding the block, students learned to use MIT AI2 companion to scan the QR Code, so the app instantly appears on the tablet/phone. When the user clicks the button, the phone says the message, such as “Congratulations, you’ve made your first app.” Students were excited and thrilled about their first app. Students left with questions on how to improve the app in the next class.

In the Scratch Explorer class, students were assigned an account to log into Scratch. Our first project was to “Animate a name”. Students are asked to choose a name, any type of name, such as the name of her pet, a place, or sport they like. The project is to animate the name, and bring the name alive by adding different effects: dance, singing, spinning, changing color, etc. After choosing the name, students followed instructions to choose letter sprites. The first animation effect is to change the color of the letter. We dragged and dropped the Change color block. Every click on the sprite block made the color of the letter change. How to make the color change without clicking on the sprite block? We used the Loop block to repeat the Change color action. There is a problem as the color of the letter change too fast. How to fix it? We need to slow down the change so that we can see the color change in the letter. To do so, we added a Wait timer after or before the Change color block. Students were encouraged to play with the setting by changing different values in the timer and the loop to see different results. We also learned a trick on how to duplicate the coding blocks to each letter by drag and drop of the entire blocks to the other image sprite. Lastly, we added an Event. When the Flag is clicked, all of the letters started changing color.

How nice to hear a student say: I could not wait to come to the next class!

Unlike traditional coding, visual block coding transforms creativity into actions instantly. Learning by doing, students see their ideas come to life. Learning in a fun way stimulates their natural curiosities. Just like any other activity, sport, music or drawing, coding takes practice to be better. Coding also instills design and problem-solving skills, enabling young people to think, to adapt, and to deal with challenges.

With innovative tools like App Inventor and Scratch, teaching kids to code is no longer a daunting task. Welcome to the world of happy coding! Cheers!

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HK Children built Burger Ordering App for local restaurant

Karen — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 19:18:10 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Tommie Lo.

It’s 11:30 in the morning, 45 minutes away to your lunch break. Having been in a rush and skipped breakfast, you are suffering from the complaint of your rumbling stomach. Here, you pick up a tablet, access an app and start ordering your customized burger.

You choose from a selection of buns, vegetables, patties to a list of chef’s secret sauce. When you are ready, a simulated mouthwatering burger appears in front of you. Then you place your order and grab your burger out of your office right at 12:15.

This is what our coders aged 9-12 built during the Preface Hackathon last Sunday - a "Create Your Own Burger&quot. custom app for Hong Kong burger chain Texas Burger, which was structured with Variables and ListPicker components, and further fine-tuned with Procedure components and colour coding. As aforementioned, the app provides enhanced visualization for customers, and also serves as a confirmation tool for store owners to minimize wrong orders.

All kids are born with limitless creativity. Give them a platform to channel their abilities, and they may end up with creations with larger impacts than any adult could fathom. There is an ever growing influence of coding knowledge in the real world, and hence, newer platforms for kids’ creativity are needed to reflect this change. The App Inventor blocks that our coders have thoroughly explored may be interpreted as the next "Lego".

This was well reflected in our Hackathon. Though many kids at the event were young, and had little experience with coding, they exhibited a passion and excitement for coding that stunned their own parents. They were fully engaged throughout, and were buzzing to contribute in any way they could. This bodes well with our role as Preface Programmers - to guide young coders in not only learning, but applying coding knowledge practically too. We are extremely proud of every kid for the work they’ve put in, and would also like to take this opportunity to thank Texas Burger for being a reliable partner all through this event!

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Changing the Asian Community one App at a time - Preface Hackathon

Karen — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 17:53:00 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Queena Ling.

Coding education has always been viewed with utmost importance in USA and UK, and has also been an integral component of school curricula in Japan and China. Yet, many parents in Hong Kong still perceive coding education as an extracurricular activity. The failure to see the importance of coding knowledge may arise from an inability to envision how their children could apply their newfound knowledge to real world situations.

Both parents and kids alike need to be exposed to opportunities that allow them to experience the eye-opening possibilities coding knowledge could bring when it is applied to the real world. With that in mind, Preface launched its very own Hackathon event, in which students attempt to build an application with App Inventor to enhance and improve the local community with technology.

Over the last two Sundays in Aug 2018, Preface Junior Coders used components of QR code scanners and TinyDB in App Inventor to design a discount app for a local coffee store (Preface Coffee). The event successfully demonstrated how simple applications can have a profound effect on the community in solving real world issues and improving efficiencies around us.

Preface believes Hackathon is the ideal event to combine a child’s coding knowledge with their inherent creative abilities and imagination, as it allows them to fully immerse in the process of designing and building their own applications. It definitely fuels students’ confidence in not only their coding mindset, but also their ability to change the world with it.

Preface intends to continue running Hackathon events, in hopes that this could be the first step to instilling a Silicon Valley styled coding culture and a world standard problem solving method that is not currently prominent in Asia.

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David Tseng presents at Maker Faires

Karen — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 17:54:18 +0000

This is a guest blog by CSAIL Visiting Scientist and MIT Master Trainer David Tseng

On June 14 and 15, 2018, educators from all over the world came to the Education University of Hong Kong for the CTE conference 2018 and shared their wonderful experiences of computational thinking. There was also an App Inventor IoT workshop focusing on how to communicate with small IoT boards with your smart phone. David Tseng, one of the Visiting Scientists of MIT CSAIL and one of the MIT Master Trainers, was there to conduct the workshop. During the interesting two hours, participants learned the basics of Bluetooth Low Energy communication and how to interact with the LinkIt 7697 board with their smart phone. David also hosted two App Inventor workshops later at the Hong Kong Maker Faire and Singapore Maker Faire.

More information about MIT App Inventor IoT: http://iot.appinventor.mit.edu/

AI2 workshop in HongKong maker faire: http://makerfairehongkong.com/2018/tc/attractions/full-makers-list/#p_programming-education-mit-app-inventor

AI2 IoT workshop in Singapore maker faire: https://singapore.makerfaire.com/maker/entry/31/

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Florida Gulf Coast University and University of South Florida Summer Camp Students Learn App Inventor

Karen — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 19:02:49 +0000

This is a guest blog by MIT Master Trainer Lyra Logan

High school students in programs at two Florida public universities learned about event-driven programming as they built quick useful apps with App Inventor this summer.

In June 2018, I taught Mobile Software Development with App Inventor to 50 honor students from Southwest Florida schools who participated in the Florida Gulf Coast University Summer STEM Camp in Fort Myers, Florida. In the sessions, the students and I discussed the app development design process and worked through tutorials that demonstrate the many useful components we can incorporate into apps created with App Inventor. Participants built prototypes that featured text-to-speech, animation, drawing, the accelerometer sensor, and AI’s new Maps components. The clear highlight for most was using Maps components to build interactive apps that track their locations and calculate their distance from favorite Florida destinations.

Florida Gold Coast University Summer STEM Camp

This past spring, I also trained two instructors to teach a class in app development as part of the University of South Florida’s Upward Bound summer program in Tampa, which serves Hillsborough County, Florida, high school students living in low-income households or households in which neither parent holds a bachelor's degree. The class spent 20 hours during June and the first part of July learning to create apps with App Inventor. At the end of summer, students showcased their projects and talked about the benefits of learning to create with technology. The winning app project used the new Maps, database and other components to show the location and real-time game scores of intramural basketball and soccer matches on campus.  