Creating Socially Relevant Mobile Apps: Infusing Computing into Middle School Curricula in Two School Districts

Publications

In this paper, we share our experiences implementing a professional development program in two school districts with middle school teachers who integrated an introductory computer science curriculum into their teaching. The 15 to 20–hour curriculum was based on students collaboratively creating mobile apps for socially relevant purposes with MIT App Inventor. Eleven teachers infused the curriculum into technology, math, engineering, library and art courses. We investigated how teachers modified the curriculum to fit their respective standards and students’ needs. We discuss the challenges they

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Empowering Middle School Students to Create Data-enabled Social Apps

Publications

MIT App Inventor has enabled middle school students to learn computing while creating their own apps-including apps that serve community needs. However, few resources exist for building apps that gather and share data. There is a need for new tools and instructional materials for students to build data-enbaled, community-focused apps. We developed an extension for App Inventor, called AppleVis, which allows app-makers to publish and retrieve data from our existing web-based collaborative data visualization platform.

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Computing with a Community Focus: Outcomes from an App Inventor Summer Camp for Middle School Students

Publications

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a one-week App Inventor summer camp for middle school students with an explicit focus on addressing local community needs. The community focus of the camp was designed to appeal to a broad range of students. We conducted an in-depth interview study to examine its impact on students' attitudes and perceptions, and supplemented this with results from project evaluation. Our results indicate that students had positive experiences in learning and creating real apps for solving community problems. Focusing on local community needs can also help to

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