[IAEP] Google demos Scratch-based Android development tool for students

[Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero]

I don't know if it's a crazy idea but i guess TA can be used also to
construct activities,
Defining specific general blocks for general sugar specifics, like
graphics toolkit and prescence.



Rafael Ortiz



On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 12:24 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at cscott.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:45 AM, Kevin Cole <dc.loco at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/fgfvtXF_2a8/google-demos-codeless-android-development-tool-for-students.ars
>> Google has announced a new browser-based visual development tool called App
>> Inventor that allows users to create Android applications without having to
>> write any code. It appears to be aimed primarily at students. App Inventor
>> enables user interface design with a simple drag-and-drop layout system. The
>> behavior of the user interface elements can be programmed via a visual
>> development system that the user manipulates by organizing blocks with
>> specific programming characteristics into various structures. The blocks can
>> be dragged around and snapped into each other to form relatively
>> sophisticated programs. This aspect of App Inventor is based on Scratch, an
>> MIT visual programming language. The compiler that translates the blocks
>> into Android bytecode is built on top of the GNU Kawa framework, which
>> provides a Scheme-based intermediate language. It's worth noting that Kawa
>> can also be used standalone to build entire Android applications with
>> Scheme. We were not able to test App Inventor ourselves because it is still
>> in closed beta and is not broadly available to the general public yet. If
>> you want to try it yourself, you will have to register on the Google Labs
>> website and wait for approval. For more details, see the official
>> introduction and demo video. Read the comments on this post
>
> It appears very interesting.  Unfortunately, the ripped out a lot of
> the interesting StarLogo stuff:
>   http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng
> ...and replaced with Android-specific user interface elements.
>
> One could do roughly the same thing with GTK elements to make a Sugar
> Activity builder.  Most of the hard work is already done w/ the
> OpenBlocks framework:
>   http://education.mit.edu/drupal/openblocks
>
> It's a shame the framework is written in Java, which isn't the most
> Sugar-friendly language.
>  --scott
>
> --
>                          ( http://cscott.net/ )
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