Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later moved to Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in "society and genetics". You can contact him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (it has other addresses too, so don't worry if you have another). ? Read More
In July 2010, Google announced a great educational project called App inventor. Goal? Give programmers a pretty easy way to create their own applications on the Android platform, using the drag-and-drop to add pre-written "pieces" of the code. He has was inspired to study the language scratch, but with an Android.
I ran the platform through its paces soon after its launch, attempting to build some basic applications of my own. It was rough. He was not even close to an easy to use. But it was fun and he's obviously had a lot of potential in a learning environment. A year later, approximately 100 000 persons are using the platform, many of them in the field of education.
Unfortunately last week hack education broke the news that Google is going to shutting down the App inventor, despite the fact that it has received significant traction with the teachers. Apparently this was part of the Google CEO Larry page disk make Google more focused company, which includes assassinations from Google Labs.
Today, Google has some better news: he announced that the inventor of the App is live in the framework of the new MIT mobile learning centre that will be placed in the famous MIT Media Lab and the App inventor creator Hal Abelson and other MIT Professor Eric Klopfer, Mitchel Resnick (both of which were also an important role in the creation of the project).
I really like the inventor of the App is a good introduction to programming, and he also gets students used to programming with mobile devices in mind, which is clearly going to be a big deal, go ahead. And I am glad that MIT agreed to take the torch from Google and save it.
However, I think it's quite funny that Google announced App inventor and then killed him (at least as an internal project) only a year after its launch. There is no way this was a serious burden for the company in terms of resources. And if Google intends to work with one of the universities in the framework of the project, why not do this from the very beginning?
Android is still very early in his life, and some children who cut their teeth on the App inventor want to dive even deeper into the platform. Anyway, I think Google should consider putting more resources into making the App inventor more intuitive, expanding its functionality and then run additional learning tools to help students make the transition by using the drag-and-drop interface to Java and/or HTML5. I hope that is exactly what will happen at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. But I wonder why Google does not find it necessary to see it through.
Here's an excerpt from Google's post, which was written by Hal Abelson, Professor of computer science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of technology:
App inventor for Android is a programming system that makes it easy for students to create mobile applications for Android smartphones — currently supports a community of about 100 000 teachers, students and hobbyists. Through these new initiatives at the MIT Center for mobile learning inventor App will connect to the Prime research at the Massachusetts Institute of technology in educational technologies and MIT'S long record of creation and support of open source software.
Google first launched the App inventor internally in order to move forward with speed and focus and transformed it to the point where he began to gain critical mass. Now, his influence can be compounded by cooperation with top academic institution. MIT Inventor of the App will adopt enriched studies with greater opportunities to influence the educational community. In a sense, the inventor of the App is now full circle, as I actually initiated the inventor of the App by Google, offering it as a project during my sabbatical with the company in 2008. The main code for the application of inventor Eric Klopfer laboratory and inspiration from Mitch Resnick zero project. The new Center is an excellent example of how industry and academia can effectively work together to create change, thanks to technology, and we look forward to what we can do next, however.
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and money in the world of information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers many ...
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