Can Android App Inventor Bring Computational Thinking to K-12? Ralph Morelli Trishan de Lanerolle Pauline Lake [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Nina Limardo Elizabeth Tamotsu Chinma Uche [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Computer Science Department Trinity College Hartford, CT, USA ABSTRACT versions to a group of invited developers, many of whom App Inventor for Android is a new visual programming plat- were college faculty interested in exploring App Inventor’s form for creating mobile applications for Android-based smart potential as a teaching platform for CS0 and K-12 students. phones. This paper reports on the summer component of To develop apps in App Inventor you do not write code. an ongoing project aimed at addressing whether App Inven- Instead you visually design the way the app looks and use tor would be a suitable platform for bringing computational blocks of interlocking components to control the app’s be- thinking to K-12 students. The project brought together a havior. In this respect App Inventor is comparable to Scratch team consisting of two high school CS teachers, two novice (http://scratch.mit.edu) and Alice (http://www.alice.org). undergraduate computing students, a community outreach Like these languages, App Inventor aims to make program- leader, and a college CS instructor. The students were eas- ming enjoyable and accessible to novices. The difference, ily able to develop complex mobile apps completely on their and perhaps an important reason for the attention it has own initiative. Overall, the team found App Inventor to be gained, is that App Inventor lets you create apps for smart an accessible and powerful platform that could well support phones. Given the popularity and ubiquity of mobile phones introductory level courses at the college and K-12 levels. among today’s generation of students, App Inventor seems to hold great potential for attracting a new generation of students to computing and computational thinking. Categories and Subject Descriptors This paper reports on a summer project aimed at address- K.3.2 [Computing Milieux]: Computer and Information ing the following question: Would App Inventor be a suitable Science Education—Computer science education, Curricu- platform for bringing computational thinking to K-12? The lum project was sponsored by the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) project (http://www.hfoss.org) General Terms and funded by the National Science Foundation as part of its effort to engage K-12 teachers interested in bringing compu- Human factors tational thinking into their classrooms. It brought together a small team consisting of two undergraduate students, two Keywords high computer science school teachers and an undergradu- ate computer science instructor to learn App Inventor and Computational thinking, App Inventor for Android, K-12 assess its suitability for classrooms at the CS0 and K-12 curriculum development levels. The teachers were chosen from schools that serve underrepresented minorities and the team focused specifi- 1. INTRODUCTION cally on whether App Inventor would have the potential to App Inventor for Android is a new visual programming engage students from this underrepresented demographic – platform for creating mobile applications (apps) for Android- i.e., girls, African Americans, and Hispanics – in the study based smart phones [7]. It was developed at Google Labs by of computing. In keeping with the community service goals a team led by MIT’s Hal Abelson. It was released to the gen- of the HFOSS project, the team also focused on apps that eral public in July, after being available in alpha and beta could be seen as socially beneficial in some way – e.g., an app that uses the phone to teach children about nutrition – and partnered with the director a community-based tech- nology outreach program who is working with the team to develop a pilot after school program that will involve App Inventor instruction. The term computational thinking (CT) was coined by Jean- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for nette Wing, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mel- personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies bear lon University and Assistant Director of the NSF’s Com- this notice and the full citation on the first page. puter and Information Science and Engineering Directorate Copyright 2010 HFOSS . (CISE)[13], as a way to call attention to the pervasiveness capacity and attendees expressed enthusiasm and optimism of computing in all aspects of contemporary human life and about App Inventor’s potential for appealing to introductory knowledge. As described by the Center for Computational level students. Thinking at Carnegie Mellon University, CT refers to a way App Inventor was also used to engage Bay Area high of solving problems that involves abstraction, algorithmic school girls in an eight week after school program entitled thinking, and other concepts acquired from the study of com- the Technovation Challenge which ran from February 23, puter science [5]. In her role as a director of NSF’s CISE, 2010 to April 22, 2010 [8]. The students used App Inventor Professor Wing as given many talks at computing confer- to create their own mobile apps and showcased them at a ences to promote the view that despite the ubiquitous of concluding ’Pitch Night.’ Although the Technovation Chal- computational thinking in modern science, social science, lenge was geared towards confidence building and teaching and the humanities, it remains completely absent from the entrepreneurial skills, the positive experiences achieved with K-12 education. Her grand vision for the 21st Century is to App Inventor can’t but have helped enhance the students’ see CT become as well integrated into K-12 curriculum as perceptions of computing as a possible area of study. mathematics is in today’s schools. The common theme emerging from these various efforts The recent K-12 focus by NSF is an important one for was that App Inventor’s ability to enable novices to build undergraduate computing education. At the undergraduate apps for a cell phone is an extremely attractive development level we are increasingly confronted with the challenge of – perhaps a game changer. It allows students to focus on recruiting students to our introductory courses. As reported the interesting aspects of programming – solving interesting in the most recent Taulbee Survey, although undergraduate design problems and building creative mobile apps that are enrollments in CS were up slightly during the 2007-8 – the socially useful and fun to share with one’s friends. Based first increase in six years – diversity remains a problem, with on a review of these experiences, App Inventor, like Scratch only 11.8% of bachelor degrees going to women and only and Alice, seemed to us to be an attractive platform for around one-third going to minority students [15]. The fact engaging students at all levels in the computing curriculum, is that entering first year students are not giving CS close K-12 through university. consideration in their academic plans and part of the reason for this is that K-12 students, for the most part, receive little 3. WHAT WE DID or no exposure to CS. Our project explored ways of using App Inventor to in- The summer project focused on learning to build mobile troduce computational thinking to K-12 teachers and stu- apps that would appeal to the K-12 demographic and de- dents. One student (Limardo) was a rising senior Theater veloping curricular ideas and lesson plans for incorporating and Dance major. Her previous CS experience consisted of App Inventor into the K-12 classroom. As the following sec- a CS0 course that taught a little PHP scripting. The other tions describe, the team came to a very positive conclusion (Lake) was a rising sophomore Computer Science and Ed- regarding App Inventor’s potential as a teaching platform ucation major who had completed a CS1 course based on for CS0 and K-12 students. A number of follow-up activities Python and Java. Both teachers (Tamotsu and Uche) have are now planned for the 2010-2011 academic year, including had training in computer science and familiarity with a num- a workshop for computer science teachers, an App Inventor ber of programming languages and both have K-12 experi- project for the computing club at a local high school, an ence in computer science and other subjects, including math- after school program in Hartford, CT for students and their ematics. Both are members of the Connecticut Chapter of families, and an undergraduate CS0 course. the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and one (Uche) currently serves as the the CSTA chair. Morelli and 2. CONTEXT AND RELATED WORK de Lanerolle served as project leaders and mentors, although App Inventor has been presented at a number of recent this was their first experience with App Inventor. And the workshops and has already created considerable buzz within remaining team member (Espinosa) helped the team develop the CS education community.. During Fall 2009 an alpha follow-up plans. version of the software was used in CS0-like courses to intro- duce non-programmers to computing at 11 colleges and uni- 3.1 The Students' Experience versities and one high school [1]. All of the trials were consid- Before the teachers joined the group, the students spent ered successful, and App Inventor garnered praise from the the first four weeks teaching themselves App Inventor. They professors and students alike. As one instructor noted,“App started with the Google online tutorials and progressed quickly Inventor has the potential to transform Computer Science into writing their own applications.