Josh’s Blog

Technovation 2017 Workshop at MIT

Feb 7, 2017 josh's Blog

On Saturday, January 23, 100+ people attended the MIT App Inventor session at the Stata Center at MIT to prepare for Technovation 2017. Huge thanks to the rest of the App Inventor team, including Lisa Yuan, Mike Tissenbaum, Paul Medlock-Walton, Jane Im & Marisol Diaz for their parts in making...

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New Release Features Extensions, Bluetooth LE & LEGO EV3

Jun 16, 2016 josh's Blog

Late the evening of June 15, EDT, the MIT App Inventor team pushed a significant component release to its live, public-facing main instance. More information about the release is available. This release enables extension components, which for now are non-visible components only, which may be written by...

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Welcome 30 New Master Trainers in Mobile Educational Computing

Mar 28, 2016 josh's Blog

We had an spectacular experience this past week we had 30 people, from 18 countries, come together to be trained as MIT Master Trainers in Mobile Educational Computing (with MIT App Inventor), put together jointly with the MIT Professional Education Short Programs group.

Together with the amazing folks...

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Seeking Applicants for Positions on App Inventor Team

Mar 21, 2016 josh's Blog

As part of a major initiative we'll be undertaking with collaborators from Hong Kong and sponsored by the generosity of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the MIT App Inventor team is seeking applicants for three new staff positions.

Though this post is mostly an update to Hal's...

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MIT App Inventor Translated to Brazilian Portuguese

Jan 26, 2016 josh's Blog

This is a guest post by Eduardo Valle

Eu sou professor de Engenharia de Computao na UNICAMP, uma das principais universidades brasileiras. Meus colegas e eu estamos trabalhando para tornar mais diverso o pblico interessado nas profisses de Cincia, Tecnologia,...

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iVolunteer for Chennai

Dec 14, 2015 josh's Blog

Indian Youth Builds App to Mobilize Resources for Disaster Relief

When deadly floods hit the Indian city of Chennai (Madras) in early December 2015, the award winning app inventor, Arjun Kumar put on his inventors hat once again, to build his newest app, iVolunteer for...

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NSF Award to Team from Boise State to Research with App Inventor

Nov 4, 2015 josh's Blog

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Yu-Chang Hsu from Boise State University Our team at Boise State University is really excited to have been awarded a grant recently by the National Science Foundation. Our project and research focus on enhancing undergraduate STEM majors learning in mathematics, particularly trigonometry,...

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Reactions to a CS10k Webinar: Block Party

Oct 11, 2015 josh's Blog

Note: This post is re-blogged from https://csforhumanity.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/reactions-to-a-cs10k-webinar-block-party/. I write this without having listened to the recording of the first half of the webinar, Block Party: Meet Some of the Creative Minds Behind Blockly, Scratch, and More!, which took place live on the evening of October 7, 2015. I hope...

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Exciting News from Boise State University

Sep 11, 2015 josh's Blog

We just heard some very exciting news from our good friend Yu-Chang Hsu at Boise State University: The National Science Foundation Directorate of Education and Human Resources has awarded Boise State University a $163,660 supplemental funding grant to support using App Inventor to help STEM students learn trigonometry by developing...

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College Board Announces Endorsement of Advanced Placement Mobile CSP Course

Jun 22, 2015 josh's Blog

Earlier this month, The College Board and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an extension of their partnership to support teachers and schools in offering the new Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles (CSP) course in the fall of 2016. In their announcement, they endorsed the Mobile CSP...

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MIT App Inventor Classic to MIT App Inventor 2 Converter Released

Jun 18, 2015 josh's Blog

The converter tool designed to convert MIT App Inventor Classic projects to MIT App Inventor 2 projects has just been released. Note that it is carefully, and specifically designed to convert projects from the latest version of MIT App Inventor Classic to projects readable by MIT App Inventor 2...

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NEW: Sharing and Remixing directly from MIT App Inventors Integrated Gallery!

May 18, 2015 josh's Blog

The App Inventor team is happy to announce a new feature designed to encourage sharing and exploration of projects and the code behind them. App Inventor now has an integrated gallery for sharing your apps and exploring the code of others apps! From within App Inventor,...

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Scholarly Research with or about MIT App Inventor

Mar 12, 2015 josh's Blog

In addition to being a great app creation and computational thinking learning environment, MIT App Inventor is the hub of a broad network of scholarly research.

The team at MIT is happy to collaborate with a wide range of other researchers who either use MIT App Inventor as a platform...

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Verizon Innovative App Challenge announces 2015 Best In State Winners

Jan 7, 2015 josh's Blog

Congratulations to our collaborators from the Verizon Foundation and the Technology Student Association, and especially to the just announced Best In State winners of the 2015 Verizon Innovative App Challenge.

We're excited to learn about the great ideas coming from these winners, and look forward to sending out our...

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MIT App Inventor - "A Language the Pays"

Jan 7, 2015 josh's Blog

Thanks to Jeff Cogswell and the folks at dice.com for the nice mention of MIT App Inventor as a tool worth knowing about for building Android apps!

Thanks too, to the slashdotter who put the word out further.

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MIT App Inventor - now available with Chinese or Spanish Interface - More Languages to Come

Jan 6, 2015 josh's Blog

Though some of you may have noticed late in 2014, we're now making the official announcement. MIT App Inventor has been used in many countries (more than 195 at last count) for some time, but now the interface for the programming environment, found at http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/, is now available in...

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OSU Student Reinvents The Wheel (And Uses MIT App Inventor to Control It)

Dec 23, 2014 josh's Blog

Thanks to our friend Arta Szathmary who passed on the story of Carter Hurd, a sophomore at The Ohio State University, who built a robot with innovative transformable wheels, and used an app built with MIT App Inventor to control it from a distance, according to

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Teaching App Creation Self-Study Course Open to Public

Jul 16, 2014 josh's Blog

We're very happy to announce that Teaching App Creation, a course designed for those who wish to teach others how to build apps with MIT App Inventor is now live and available for the general public. Made possible by the generous support of the Verizon Foundation, and originally built...

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Share Your Stories!

Jul 16, 2014 josh's Blog

We continue to hear about more and more people using App Inventor, but can't know about or keep up with everything that's going on by ourselves. That's where you come in! Please write up a brief story of what you, your students, your company, or others you know are doing...

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Join us at the 2014 MIT App Inventor Summit!

Apr 29, 2014 josh's Blog

Join us at MIT for the third annual App Inventor Summit to be held July 17 & 18, 2014. The MIT App Inventor Summit is the annual gathering of the world-wide App Inventor community. Hosted by the MIT Center for Mobile Learning and the MIT...

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$200K Keck Grant for Appinventor.org

Apr 9, 2013 josh's Blog

David Wolber and the University of San Francisco received a $200,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to launch the Democratize Computing Lab at USF . The Labs mission is to break down the programmer divide and radically broaden and diversify the pool of software creators. The Lab...

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Meet the MIT App Inventor Training Corps

Mar 19, 2013 josh's Blog

This past Friday and Saturday, at the MIT Media Lab, I had...

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