On January 14 (Fri.), I held an MIT App Inventor workshop at Tohoku University’s Aobayama Garage. The venue, Aobayama Garage, is part of Tohoku University’s Business Innovation Center, which provides various entrepreneurial support with the aim of creating and fostering start-up ventures from Tohoku University.
On the day of the event, as a countermeasure against Omicron strains, which have been spreading rapidly now, thorough measures were taken to disinfect hands and equipment and to avoid prolonged seclusion.
Ten students from undergraduate to doctoral program participated in the workshop and learned the basic usage of MIT App Inventor. In addition to the MIT App Inventor course, real cases from the world of “Computational Action” were presented. Participants commented that they were surprised that even teenagers can develop smartphone applications that have an impact on social issues, and that it made them feel that they need to take action as well.
I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Ikeuchi of the Business Innovation Center of the Industry-Academia Collaboration Organization for his great help in organizing this workshop.
2021年6月6日（日）南流山でスマホアプリ開発の公開講座を開催しました。地域の方々、都内でCoderDojoを主催する方々など11名に約３時間のスマホアプリ開発を体験いただきました。MIT（マサチューセッツ工科大学）で開発されたスマホアプリ開発ツール MIT App Inventor（アップインベンター）を使って、小学生、中学生、社会人の皆さんと短時間で実用的なスマホアプリが自作できることを体験しました。当日は南流山駅近くの素敵なシェアオフィス「Trist（トリスト）」様に快適で素敵なスペースをご提供いただきました。ありがとうございました。
冒頭の30分はコミュニティ課題や社会課題を「コンピュータ活用思考（Computational Thinking）」とアプリ開発で解決して活躍している世界の10代の若者の活動を紹介しました。大人たちは「子どもだけで何ができるのか？」と考えがちですが、我々が想像するより子どもたちや10代の若者はコミュニティ課題を深く捉えて、柔軟な発想で課題解決の要所に切り込むことができます。特別な才能も持った子どもは「コンピュータ思考」と能力を活かして水汚染などの複雑な課題に取り組みます。「コンピュータ思考」とツールを使えば特別な才能を持っていなくても、仲間たちと楽しみながら地域コミュニティを綺麗に快適にする活動に取り組むこともできます。世界の若者の活動が日本の子どもたちや10代を刺激して、自分で感じて、自分で考えて、進んで大人の助けを求めながら、自分と仲間で難しい課題に挑戦するようになってくれればよいなと、そんな想いで「コンピュータ活用思考（Computational Thinking）」、「コンピュータ活用実践（Computational Action）」、具体的な方法として MIT App Inventor を紹介しています。
ワークショップ開催中は MIT で開催中の Summer Appathonと重なりサーバーアクセスが集中して作業が中断することもありましたが、参加者の皆さんがiPhoneとアンドロイドを切り替えるなど柔軟に対応していただいて何とか最後まで演習をやり終えることができました。ご協力ありがとうございました。
当日演習で取り上げたアプリ「Hello World」の作り方をまとめた動画はこちらから視聴できます。この動画では当日テキスト表示に使ったボタンテキストの変更やテキストボックスを使った方法ではなく Notifierという部品を使っています。これは一定時間だけメッセージを表示して消える便利な仕組みですのでこちらもぜひ試してみてください。 Hello World アプリを作ろう！
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」。
Everybody talks about SDGs these days. Yes, we all are aware of many things are going around us that are already giving us a lot of impacts. You know because you see these every day on TV, the internet and maybe near you. Then what? Is there anything you can do about them?
If you are interested in learning a new skill to help the world solve problems, small to big, easy to very complex, please join us in a three hours workshop to learn :
Computational thinking
Computational Actions
MIT App Inventor : simple, easy to use free software to design and make Apps for mobile phone and tablet
Design Thinking essentials
You can sign up from the following web site. The venue is Chika Seminar Hall, conveniently located from Kita Sando staion, Toshin Fukutoshin subway line.
On Saturday, October 26th, a full day workshop was held at Kyushu Sangyo University. Six hours plus long workshop gave a chance to students to think about their thinking about a world problem thus to extract a principles for designing a solution. Participating students then actually created a mobile app in each group using MIT App Inventor.
The workshop was initiated by an invitation from Management School Dean, Prof.Osamu Kikima after a short discussion with Masao Ishihara, a MIT Master Trainer in Educational Mobile Computing. We set three goals in the workshop.
– Unlocking hidden knowledge using LEGO®️ SERIOUS PLAY®️ method and material, to help student have deeper and broader view to world problem.
⁃ Design a mobile app with a clear purpose of helping others using design thinking and short cycle prototyping similar to design sprint.
⁃ Rapid prototyping that leads to fully functioning mobile app development using MIT App Inventor
Workshop contents : – Introduction to MIT App Inventor (30 min.) – MIT App Inventor app development cycle ( 2 apps, 90 min.) – LEGO®️SERIOUS PLAY®️ skills building (45 min.) – Extracting a design principle for a world problem (w/ LSP, 90 min.) – Designing a mobile app based on design principle found (100 min.) – Final team presentation of mobile app (20 min.)
At the end of the workshop, participating students had more confidence in thinking about world problems and they came to know one powerful tool that help them to design and prototype a solution with our mighty computing tool, mobile devices.
Students also shared their feeling how LEGO®️ SERIOUS PLAY®️, a method new to them helped them deepen thinking as well to share ideas far more effectively among friends.
If you are interested in having this workshop at your school or organization, please contact Masao.
Students are thinking and sharing ideas about a world problem with LEGO®️ SERIOUS PLAY®️ method.One student group found their app design principle to solve a water problem in India. They decided to provide a solution to help young people in poor community save time to make an opportunity to learn new things. The LEGO models in the photo shows their design principle. Students are making a mobile app following their design principles. They use MIT APP Inventor to quickly design, prototype and develop a fully functioning mobile app in a short time.
教育モバイルコンピューティング 