AppInventor Course teaches our Robocoders to build mobile applications (apps), which practically connects coding techniques with real lives. While creating apps that tries to make people’s life better, our students learn practical skills happily and achieve all-rounded self-development through thinking, designing, problem-solving & developing.
There was once a RoboCoder wanted to drop notes during our class, but realized that he did not have a notebook with him. All of a sudden, he created an app that the user can draw and write/type on it. In the AppInventor course, students have to be observant of things around them, to be inspired by elements in everyday lives, in order to build related mobile apps. This is also why each of the student’s work is unique.
It is not only about programming in the AppInventor Course, “front stage design” is also a challenging part of it. When there is a framework of the functional part of an app ready, our coders have to design the app’s user interface. That involves details of where to place a button, thickness of lines, etc, which they have to decide on all of them. While this user-interface design is not as simple as drawing on a paper. They have to separate out the items as different layers, for example, a checkered design in fact consists of 2 layers where one of them are with horizontal lines and the other with vertical lines.
There will be a lot of challenges along the journey of making an app, i.e. wrong alignments of the “front-stage design” that the app could not function as expected; or there are external factors that affect the user experience of the app, such as unstable network connection or inaccurate GPS location. Therefore, during our classes, we encouraged our students to dig out the problems and look for solutions to solve them, training and boosting up their problem-solving skills and persistent mentality.
For app-creation with AppInventor, our design-thinking shall be inspired by elements from our daily-lives, so we encourage our students to be attentive to things around them. This AppInventor course will also bring our students take a leap forward in their coding experience, applying the programming techniques they have learnt in the previous courses, together with the user-interface designing on a smart phone, they will be equipped with the latest essential skill of the coming future. We also allow our Robocoders to unleash their creativity to its fullest, preparing them for the technology advancement in tomorrow’s fast-paced world.
Course Content
AppInventor involves both the backstage and front-stage creation and design, so students not only have to take care of the commands and sequences for the apps to function as expected, they also have to make sure the user-interface are friendly to be used. Furthermore, we also encourage Robocoders to make use of the features of their smart-phones and be inspired by what they encounter in everyday lives. After all, coding and technologies are for solving “problems” and make our lives better.
Final Project
Each student has to bring along an Android phone and also have a Google account ready before each lesson. Apart from that, we will provide all other learning materials during the class.
What will you get after completing the course?
- Clipped video of final project presentation
- Overall learning evaluation report
- Tutor’s comments and recommendations
- Course-completion certificate
Target Students
AppInventor is for young coders aged 11 to 15 and up with prior coding experience of at least 20 hours. Come join us to explore the magical world of AppInventor.
Things You Need
Each student has to bring along an Android phone and also have a Google account ready before each lesson. Apart from that, we will provide all other learning materials during the class.
Level 1
This is the level for students to get familiarized with the basic functioning of the coding platforms of AppInventor, such as the blocks editor and designer editor, and also some basic sensors and input components on a smart-phone like its camera and gyroscope sensor. Going onwards, tutors will lead our students to make use of existing components on the phone to create a series of mini games and tools, i.e. tic-tac-toe, stopwatch, etc, in order to let them understand the main principles and operating modes of computer programming. They shall love to see the creation and birth of their first mobile app.
Level 2
Upon completion of level 1, our students have grasped the basics of AppInventor. Advancing to level 2, we focus on real-life application, bringing practical needs to the software apps. During lessons, tutors will guide our Robocoders to write apps that help with daily life, for example as expense-management app which users can input data, to be analyzed and categorized, and then summarize a spending profile that the user could realize and further manage his finances. Furthermore, we will also work on the detailed design of user-interfaces of the apps with our students, which is also an important aspect of a successful software application. We encourage them to create apps to improve daily lives or routines, at the same time helping them to discover and identify their strengths and interests, as a preparation for their future career and development.
Level 3
The 3rd level of the course aims at exposing students to the actual circumstance and explaining to them the practical usages of mobile apps, as an extension to the previous two levels. Through understanding various concepts of database, students will be able to distinguish the different types and forms of data. At the same time, it will also enable students to better grasp the concepts of the Internet of Things (IoT), they are encouraged to design mobile apps which bring convenience to people’s daily lives. Relative ideas can be inspired by their daily observation or inconvenience they want to deal with and solve. For example, students will be taught to design their own databases for retrieving data from external websites for application, such as obtaining real-time weather data from the observatory website. The 3rd level mainly emphasizes on the practical application in order to lead students to a more advanced level.
Level 4
In Level 4, students will work with real world datasets (e.g. data.gov.hk) to create a real world mobile application. From understanding the characteristics of different datasets, collecting the dataset from internet for real-time data, combining those external data into a single application with database support etc, all concepts will be covered in this semester. It’s really similar to a university-level project!
Level 5
The 5th level of the AppInventor course will deliver students with a better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI). Students can utilize the program which automatically identifies particular objects and displays their relative names by using the mobile camera scanning them. Through the use of AI, the effect of identifying objects can be achieved. Using third-party library functions, machine learning will be carried out, and the algorithm can be combined to develop a mobile phone app. In Level 5, students can complete their first developed AI mobile apps. In addition, the finished product is practical for real-life usage and ready for future development.
AppInventor connects technology to daily life, transforms our students from app-users to app-coders. After they complete the 5 levels of the course, we will give personalized recommendation and arrangement regarding their next step for more advanced courses.