Students will create complete a basic tutorial using a block based coding platform.
One of the ARC challenge projects is to create a quiz app that relates to the selected innovation or topic. Some students will have prior coding experience and will have no hesitation in starting on this task. However, students who are new to programming will need to practice with the coding platform before starting the main project. The objective of this section is to give the teacher resources to use with those beginning programmers to get them ready to code.
The recommended platform for this project is AppInventor. AppInventor was created by MIT and is an online, block based coding environment. The code can be deployed to android devices so that students can see their app in action on a device. At this time, AppInventor does not work on Apple devices. For students without Android devices, there is software that can be installed to run an emulator on the computer.
Other alternatives are Scratch (also made by MIT) or Snap! (made by UC Berkeley). These are both online, block based environments for making computer games, not mobile applications.
For any of the platform options, have students complete 1 - 2 getting started tutorials so that they are familiar with the platform and have some coding success before beginning the quiz app. The Activities & Resources section below has links to tutorials for the various platforms.
AppInventor: https://appinventor.mit.edu/
Beginner tutorials with videos These videos are great! The first three tutorials teach students how to use the platform while creating basic app functionality. They especially like the "Talk to Me" tutorial.
Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/
Activity guides -- students can pick one to try out the platform
Snap! : https://snap.berkeley.edu/