MIT App Inventor: Objectives, Design, and Development

Abstract

MIT App Inventor is an online platform designed to teach computational thinking concepts through development of mobile applications. Students create applications by dragging and dropping components into a design view and using a visual blocks language to program application behavior. In this chapter, we discuss (1) the history of the development of MIT App Inventor, (2) the project objectives of the project and how they shape the design of the system, and (3) the processesMIT uses to develop the platform and how they are informed by computational thinking literature. Key takeaways include use of components as abstractions, alignment of blocks with student mental models, and the benefits of fast, iterative design on learning.