MIT's App Inventor is the "resurrection" of Google's App Inventor.
Google App Inventor's GUI was derived from StarLogoTNG's CodeBlocks
interface (you can notice this by opening the MIT App Inventor's
Blocks Editor), very similar to MIT Scratch's programming environment.
Scratch is an extremely successful tool in educational computing.
Since 2007, more than 2 millions freely available open source projects
have been created by members (5- to 70-years-old) of the Scratch
Community. Scratch has been created by Mitch Resnick, a Seymour
Papert's student. Papert is the inventor of Logo, another extremely
successful tool in programming.
To me "block languages" are not a good tool for computing in itself.
They are extremely good when they are "flat" enough, so that
everything they expose to the user is under their eyes. In this way
programming becomes natural, and computing too.
Stefano
Citando Clendon Gibson :
I was wondering if anyone on the PPIG list had used either the
HyperNext Android Creator or the MIT App Inventor.
The reason I mention it here is that both languages claim to be
aimed at either non-programmers or beginning programmers.
If the Wikipedia article on App Inventor is to be believed, that
project "drew upon significant prior research in educational
computing".
Has anyone used these and if so, what did you think?
--
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in
Scotland (SC 038302).
Stefano Federici
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Università degli Studi di Cagliari
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
Dipartimento di Scienze Pedagogiche e Filosofiche
Via Is Mirrionis 1, 09123 Cagliari, Italia
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Cell: +39 349 818 1955 Tel.: +39 070 675 7815
Fax: +39 070 675 7113
