MIT App Inventor Update

An update to MIT App Inventor was pushed out on 18 February, and users will see a pop-up screen alerting them to this on their first sign-in after that date. None of the updates described in the release notes should have an impact on existing Smart Skills apps, and the changes to the appearance and functionality of App Inventor are minor enough to go unnoticed by most users.

If you have installed the AI2 Companion App on an Android device in order to use the WiFi or USB 'live debug' methods, it will need to be updated to use the new features in this App Inventor release. If you installed the Companion App from the Google Play store, it will update automatically; if you installed it directly to your device, you will need to manually update to version 2.36 at appinv.us/companion.

Hello Again, World!

This blog, formerly the UniTY Smart Skills Development Diary, is being extended to cover developments across the full range of UniTY courses: Multimedia, Smart Skills, Employability Skills, and Student Empowerment. Each article will be tagged with the course(s) to which it applies.

The blog has a new title and new domain, http://blog.unitydcu.ie, but is still hosted on Blogger as that is the most convenient platform for students and teachers to use for their own blogs, being integrated with Gmail and Google+. Links from the old domain are automatically redirected, so there is no need to update existing bookmarks.

As before, access to the blog is by invitation only and is restricted to teachers and guidance counsellors who have engaged with the UniTY programme. With this in mind, we encourage you to comment freely on any articles posted on the blog, and to use it to share experiences and start conversations with your peers in other schools.

Running App Inventor on a Tablet

While the usual setup is to build apps on a PC and then download them to a simulator or Android device for testing, it is also possible to use App Inventor in a browser running on a tablet, building and testing apps on the same device. However, the smaller screen and touch interface can make this challenging:

• On the Designer screen, instead of dragging a component onto the Viewer, 'long-click' to the right of the name of the component to select it (press until the highlight disappears), then click on the Viewer where it is to be positioned. Changing the order of the components on the Viewer works essentially the same way: click the component once to highlight it, then long-click to select it for moving, then click in its new position. Both of these operations are tricky to do initially, even when the display is zoomed in, but with some practice can be done reliably.
• On the Blocks screen, the code blocks are quite large relative to the screen size in landscape, but in portrait they're smaller and it's easier to get an overview of the program. To zoom in or out, pinch outside the Viewer area.
• To build the app, use the build APK for download option and the app will be downloaded and installed on the tablet directly.

In short, not a recommended approach, but workable if there are no other options.

Course Consolidation

The Smart Skills course on the Unity DCU website has been consolidated to display each project on a single page (Introduction, Core 1, Core 2, Core 3) instead of the week-by-week structure previously used. This better reflects the fact that individuals and groups will progress through the material at different rates, for any number of reasons. There is no change to the deliverables, videos or resources associated with each project, and bookmarks or links to the previous week-by-week pages are redirected to the appropriate project page.

Additional Resources

Project Notes and Extra Challenges have been added to the Core 3: Project Management project, to provide additional insight into the workings of the app, and suggestions for further development:

• http://unitydcu.ie/ss-c3n - Project Notes
• http://unitydcu.ie/ss-c3c - Extra Challenges

The version of the app developed in the lesson plans has been added to the Smart Skills section of the App Library, and a version including some of the extra challenges has been added to the UniTY section of the library.

Core 3: Project Management Updates

The videos for Core 3: Project Management have been reviewed and very minor edits made. There is no change to the instructional content, so there is no need to revisit videos that students have already viewed. The old versions of the videos are now marked private.

The downloadable AIA file SimpleBowling_example.aia has been updated to add missing images and to prevent the app from crashing when the game is played. It therefore differs from the code shown in video 4 as follows:

• add a bowling pin image to the TitleSprite on the home screen so that the sprite is visible
• set the Speed of the sprite in the TitleMove procedure (the Interval is set by default) to make it move
• add bowling pin images to the remaining PinSprites on the play screen
• set the Ball speed to a multiple of the Flung speed for more realistic movement
• add handling for a collision with the BallSprite to the PinCollide procedure, because a Ball sprite cannot be referenced with an Any ImageSprite block
• set the Speed and Heading of the ball and pin sprites to zero in the ResetPins procedure to stop them from moving and 'stand the pins up' ready to play again

This is the minimum set of changes needed to get a working game. There is ample scope for enhancing this app, even beyond the fourth and fifth deliverables mentioned in the lesson plans; this will be the subject of a future post, with a sample app to follow.

Modular Arithmetic with Mr. Spock

An important aspect of programming is to consider a program’s requirements in terms of computational effort and memory usage: an algorithm that makes efficient use of resources can help make a program robust and scalable.

Deciding the winner in Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock could be done with a brute force walk through the rules to find a match, but we can design an efficient modular arithmetic solution instead. Mr. Spock would approve.

• The Mathematics of Rock Paper Scissors