MIT App Inventor - Team Teaching

I worked with John Gates to deliver a team teaching presentation using MIT App Inventor and with his background in behavioral therapy and my skills with technology we were able to successfully get our classmates into the software and creating apps using tutorials.  The foci of the lesson were cultivating Creatively Focused Technology Fluent (CFTF) Mindsets, app building, and mindful minimalism.

Affordances and Constraints

We recognize the following as affordances of the MIT App Inventor: 

• The tool is online, cloud-based, and free

• It’s easy to sign up for an account

• There are several tutorials available that show how different features work

• Since it uses a Graphic User Interface (GUI) as its means of programming it takes out the confusing mechanics of many programming languages

We have all heard some variation of "There is no light without the dark" and this lesson is no exception.  Here are the constraints we found for this tool: 

• It only works on Android phones at this time

• It has an emulator but we were unable to get it to work

• If the internet where you are keeps going out, you can’t really use it

• The drag-and-drop mechanics are the only way to interact with the GUI to place components (cannot double-click to place parts - is not the most accessibility-friendly)

Why this lesson?

The graph that follows shows confidence levels in learners for their technology skills.  We would like to highlight that of all of the included skills on this graph "Creating a Smartphone App" is at the bottom of the scale of learning confidence in their skill-level.  Minimalism made sense for us to use here when we consider that Carroll (1990) said, “Adult learners are not blank slates; they don’t have funnels in their heads; they have little patience for being treated as 'don’t knows;"

Startup Walkthrough

Video Transcript: 

Presentation Follow-up

This is a follow-up video to the presentation John Gates and I gave on Friday July 8th, 2022 explaining how to package and download apps created using MIT App Inventor on a Samsung S21.  The process with other Android OS phones will likely be very similar but may need a little supplementary independent research to make it work.

Video Transcript: 

Resources

• MIT App Inventor

• Video made with Camtasia

Citations

Henriksen, D., Mehta, R. & Rosenberg, J. (2019). Supporting A Creatively Focused Technology Fluent Mindset Among Educators: Survey Results from a Five-Year Inquiry Into Teachers’ Confidence in Using Technology. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 27(1), 63-95. Waynesville, NC USA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education. Retrieved July 12, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/184724/. 

Carroll, J.M. (1990). The Nurnberg Funnel. Cambridge , MA: MIT Press.