Students' Experiences from the use of MIT App Inventor in classroom
Katerina Perdikuri · 2014
MIT App Inventor for Android is a visual programming environment for creating applications for Android-based smartphones and tablets. It constitutes an alternative, quite easy but also powerful programming platform as it allows the development of apps using databases, interactive maps and other advanced concepts and most importantly, you do not have to write code. In this paper we first present how App Inventor works, its limitations and benefits compared to other Android application development environments, and we subsequently report on teacher and students' experiences from using App Inventor as an introductory programming course with senior high school students. The students were able to create mobile apps quite easily either following specified instructions or on their own initiative. Overall, the research conducted using a questionnaire found that App Inventor could make programming enjoyable and accessible to novices, enabling students to develop computing skills and computational thinking. Finally, we discuss possible extensions App Inventor could have as a visual programming environment for mobile application development.