App Inventor Create Your Own Android Apps by David Wolber

* Ebook- PDF Format *

What Can You Do with App Inventor?

Play
Creating apps for your phone is fun, and App Inventor promotes exploration and discovery. Just open App Inventor in a web browser, connect your phone, and start putting together blocks like those in Figure 0-1. You can immediately see and interact with the app youre building on the phone. So youre programming, but youre also emailing your friend to send you a text to test your app, or youre
controlling a LEGO NXT robot with the app you just built, or youre unplugging the phone and walking outside to see if your app is using the location sensor correctly.

Prototype
Have an idea for an app? Instead of writing it down on a napkin or letting it float off into the ether, build a quick prototype. Prototypes are incomplete and unrefined working models of your idea. Expressing an idea in text is like writing a to a friend or loved one with prose; think of an App Inventor prototype as poetry to a venture capitalist. In this way, App Inventor can serve as an electronic napkin for
mobile app development.

Build apps with personal utility
In the current state of the mobile app world, were stuck with the apps were given.
Who hasnt complained about an app and wished it could be personalized or adjusted in some way? With App Inventor, you can build an app exactly how you want it. In Chapter 3, youll build a MoleMash game that lets you score points by touching a randomly moving mole. But instead of using the image of the mole in the tutorial, you can customize it so that you mash a picture of your brother or
sistersomething that only you might want to do, but who cares? In Chapter 8, youll write a quiz app that asks questions about US Presidents, but you can easily customize it to ask questions on any topic you want, from your favorite music to your family history.

Develop complete apps
App Inventor is not just a prototyping system or an interface designeryou can build complete, general-purpose apps. The language provides all the fundamental programming building blocks like loops and conditionals, but in block form.

Teach and learn
Whether youre at a middle school, high school, or university, App Inventor is a great teaching and learning tool. Its great for computer science, but is also a terrific tool for math, physics, entrepreneurship, and just about any other discipline.
The key is that you learn by creating. Instead of memorizing formulas, you build an app to, say, find the closest hospital (or mall!). Instead of writing an essay on Black History, you create a multimedia quiz app with video and speeches from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. We think App Inventor, and this book, can be a great tool in classes throughout the curriculum.