In Japan, government lifted most of the restriction caused by the COVID. Still many people work at home staying long hours at desk. So I had a fun weekend activity with my LSP friends. LSP stands for LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, a playful but very powerful method built around our core values and some key theories. LSP friends are practitioners of the method to help people communicate and solve complex problems.
This past weekend, we gathered on-line to have fun making stop motion animation using bricks. I was so amazed with their imagination and creativity. I post below some works by them. All works were made less than one our after brief introduction of basic skills and knowledge. Some were done by elementary kids. I uploaded their works to YouTube below. Please watch and enjoy!
A group of international and Japanese students at Hiroshima University (Hiroshima, Japan) learned mobile app creation using MIT App Inventor on February 19th, 2020.
Participated students, followings are resources for you to review what we made. You can use them to develop further ideas and to make a solution for your project. I will add more resorces within a couple of days.
Exercise #1 Basic operation of MIT App Inventor Following video shows basics of how to use MIT App Inventor. It also shows how you can make your phone talk using “text to speech” component.
Below two videos show what we exactly did (in Japanese only, sorry)
Exercise #3 Camera App Editable program file can be found in following link.
Exercise #2 Machine Translation
Here is a link to a shared holder for you. You can find editable files with “.aia” extention. Download any of them to your computer then within MIT App Inventor, to import the project or tutorial by choosing “import project (.aia) from my computer… from “My project” menu.
For the machine translatio project, we worked select “translate_tutorial.aia” to download the project to your computer. It has a step by step instruction to make the app.
From the shared holder, choose “CameraApp.aia” to download the project to your computer. You can review and modify the project for your purpose.
Exercise #4 Map app From the shared holder, choose “map.aia” to download the project to your computer. You can review and modify the project for your purpose.
I conducted one day lecture and workshop at Seiko Gakuin High School (Yokohama, Japan). Participants were 7th and 8th grade students of the school.
Students learned basic use of MIT App Inventor in the morning by making simple but functioning mobile App on Android phones. They also learned how we can wisely use cloud services including map, music and automated translation between any languages.
After lunch break, they studied a water supply problem in Mumbai, India. Since they learned design thinking in other classes, they tried to apply empathic approach to draw out core of the problem. In order to help them think about pains and inconvenience of people in this problem, I used LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method and materials. The students experienced and learned LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® already from Mr.Nashio, a mathematics teacher and a certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator from the association of master trainers in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method. They built models and shared their thoughts through 3D LEGO models with four helping LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® certified facilitators.
The students then designed their solution specifically targeted at the cores of the problem they found through LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® exercise. The results were remarkable. With only a few hour brief introduction of MIT App Inventor, some students were able to design and develop working mobile apps. Adults in the classroom were so impressed with the students’ ideas an their capability to quickly learn mobile app design and creation.
MIT App Inventor is widely used by young people especially students of elementary to college. I am pushing myself to introduce mobile computing and hands on experience using MIT App Inventor to students, teachers, and business people with little coding experience.
On January 28th, I will run another three hours workshop in Sendagaya, Tokyo. You can sign up at following page.
「彼女らのアイデア、彼女らの意見、彼女らが毎週数時間で12週間で機能的なプロトタイプを作成できたという事実に本当に驚かされました」と技術支援アドバイザーを買って出たマルティネス氏は言いました。 「サラと私はそれがどれくらい時間がかかるかについて話していました。相当な時間がかかることがわかりましたが私もフルタイムで働いています。」テクノロジーの世界で女性の存在感を高めるために活動しているLinkedInの「Women In Tech」グループの一員であるClatterbuckは、12週間の中で最もやりがいのある部分は、定期的に会うために毎週4時間を見つけることでした。「比較的短い時間で集中して話し合うとかなり興味深いアイデアを思いつくことができます」。
Mind Render, a 3D and VR educational programming software developed by a small team at Mobile Internet Technology Corp, Tokyo is ranked No.7 in Apple’s Mac Appstore. That is even higher than Scrach Desktop (offline editor).
Mind Render was designed to stimulate young people’s creativity while they learn basics and advanced techniques of coding. You can also learn 3D programming and VR in a simple easy to use drag and drop style of coding.
When students learn coding, one of the difficulties they face is they don’t know what to make. Mind Render offers five “Lab” with realistic images and setting including Physics engine. You can start controling a flying drone to actually program it for advanced manuevers to tackle challenging tasks. Or you can train your sports car so it drives on its own. Infinite possibilities in realistic 3D world. Once you complete your projects, you can save it in Mind Render’s cloud server so you can download to a smartphone (Android and iOS) to experience VR of your own program.
Mind Render also offers an ideal experiment field for AI reserchers and students. We offer AI development kit using same engine of Mind Render with college level textbook. Once you train your object, you can bring it to Mind Render so you will see how smart it can be, in a realistic 3D environment. We work with University of Tokyo to develop this AI tool which will soon be available in Japan first.
