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

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.

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.