ARC Welder: Invisible Dropdowns

Those of you using ARC Welder to test apps may have noticed a problem with "invisible dropdowns" when trying to set the recommended Orientation (Portrait) and Form Factor (Phone) on first use. As shown below, the triangle points upward when the selector is clicked, but the dropdown is not visible.

This appears to be intermittent and is a recent problem, possibly introduced with the current version of ARC Welder in early August. The dropdowns are in fact still active, but are invisible: it is therefore still possible to select the desired Orientation and Form Factor by clicking once to open the dropdown (triangle points upwards), and then clicking where the desired option should appear, by reference to the images below. Typically the desired settings are Portrait for Orientation, and Phone for Form Factor.

 

While not ideal, and potentially difficult to have students do successfully, this at least allows the orientation and form factor of ARC Welder to be set to match the apps created by App Inventor. On the positive side, it only needs to be done once per session, provided ARC Welder is not closed.

The images with the dropdowns visible as expected were taken from the version of Chrome Portable and ARC Welder provided on a USB during the Smart Skills Training sessions. This may be a viable alternative, at the cost of needing to manually copy Chrome Portable onto every student PC, and ensuring that students open Chrome Portable and not the normal Chrome installation when using App Inventor and ARC Welder.

DCU / CompuB Apple Professional Development

Below is a link to the Apple Professional Development training which will take place in DCU on Monday 10th October 2016.

The workshop will take place from 9.30 to 12.30 (3 hours in duration) and is aimed at beginners and intermediate users of iPads in the Classroom.

Priority will be given to teachers delivering the UniTY modules, however it is available to any teachers in your school who may benefit from this type of training. Max 2 teachers from each school.

The training is free of charge and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Should places fill in the morning session, I will investigate a second session if the demand is there.

http://doodle.com/poll/6kgmv2ck4k4yaf7r

Please fill in your name AND school (in the same box) when signing up on the Poll below.

Multimedia Video Themes

This year for the very first time, we have 5 different themes in the competition. This is to encourage as much diversity as possible in your TY Class groups. They are: 

***************************

Inspire Me  
This can include topics like People who inspire me / Places that inspire me / Inspiration in my Community / Role Models to mention a few! 


Education
Where can education lead you? The Importance of Education / Getting to College / Differences in Education in other Countries to name but a few ideas. 

Social Media
Importance of it, Benefits, Affects / Impact on Society / Teenagers, How we use it, Downside etc

The Work of Charities
Marie Keating will be involved in this category, however we encourage students to find a charity that means something to them or who works in an area they want to know more about / Promote their work. 

Friendship
This is probably the most general topic - the importance of Friendship / People who have been Friends for many years / How to make Friends - the list is endless here! 

*************************

The Challenge: 
To create a video that will be engaging and that you think your friends or others in your age group would be likely to share on social media. This video is a tool to communicate your message to the world.
You can include whatever you think is appropriate in the video to tell your story or communicate your message. 

·        

Deadline:
Thursday 27th April 2017 @ 5pm

Length of video:
Your video must be a minimum of 90 seconds and a maximum of 3.5 minutes.

Requirements:
1.   Every video entry must be accompanied by an Artist's Statement (available to download from www.unitydcu.ie) which outlines information on the project group, their role in the video and why this topic was chosen.
2.   Work must be filmed and edited by the students. Extracts from other sources must be acknowledged at the end of the video in the Credits.
3.   All videos must have a Title / Name and Credits at the end.
5.   Music must be royalty free as we will be uploading the videos to YouTube and sharing it with the wider DCU Community.
6.  ‘This video was made as part of the Unity DCU Programme’ should be included in the credits of your video. 
7.   Students must work in Project Groups of no more than 4 Students (there can be exceptions, but please make me aware in advance!) 
8.  All work must be the work of the students. 

*********************************

Judging Categories in each Theme

Best Documentary 
Best Production 
Best Smart Device Video (Video filmed completely on a Smartphone / Device
Most Inspiring Story
Most Creative Idea  
Viewers Choice Award (Video that receives the most views on the UniTY YouTube Channel)  

Any further questions, please email me - darran.heaney@dcu.ie 


Best of Luck to Everyone! 

BlueStacks Update

The latest version of BlueStacks (2.4.44) requires the user to log in to Google during the initial setup. This was previously optional, with a One Time Setup screen being displayed from time to time: this screen is now gone, as is the Welcome screen, with the result that the new setup procedure is more predictable and the overall user experience is cleaner. Performance and stability have also been improved steadily over the last few months.

Note: The Google account is not logged out when BlueStacks is closed, so users should consider manually disconnecting their Google account when using BlueStacks on a shared machine: go to Settings - Accounts - Google and select Remove account from the dropdown menu in the top right. Alternatively, a school may choose to create a dedicated Google account for use with BlueStacks, and leave that account logged into all instances of BlueStacks. Students would still use their individual Google accounts with App Inventor.

For more information about Bluestacks, refer to this earlier post.

Raspberry Pi and App Inventor

We have uploaded a selection of apps and accompanying Python files to the App Library which demonstrate how App Inventor can be used to build apps that interface to a Raspberry Pi. Examples include controlling LEDs, reading sensors, driving a robot, and viewing webcam images. There's also a multifunction app that combines all of these and adds speech synthesis for full remote control of a Raspberry Pi robot.

Coding: Next Steps

For teachers or students interested in growing their software development skills beyond the contents of the Smart Skills course, there are any number of paths to follow. This document lists some popular sources of further training, but is by no means exhaustive.

Chrome Portable and ARC Welder

Some schools may not be able to install ARC Welder from the Chrome Web Store as described in the instructional videos because of computer or network security restrictions. While we will assist schools to investigate and attempt to resolve these issues, we are also making an alternative installation method available.

This involves copying a version of Chrome Portable with ARC Welder already installed and configured onto each student PC. Since this only requires copying files onto the PC, it can be done without administrator rights. 

1. Download the zipped archive here, and extract the contents. It may be convenient to copy the unzipped folder to a USB drive in order to install it on multiple PCs.
2. Copy the entire folder called 'GoogleChromePortable' to the root of the C: drive on the target PC. It is important not to rename the folder or copy it to any other location, as the configuration of ARC Welder depends on this location.
3. Create a shortcut on the desktop to this copy of Chrome Portable: in the C:\GoogleChromePortable folder, right-click on the shortcut 'Chrome for Smart Skills' and choose 'Send to Desktop (create shortcut)', or drag it to the desktop.
4. On the desktop, double-click the newly created shortcut to open Chrome Portable. Click on the Apps bookmark to find ARC Welder. For convenience, the bookmarks bar also contains links to App Inventor and the Smart Skills Student Resource Centre.

Note that this installation of Chrome Portable can co-exist with a normal installation of Google Chrome, so it is important to distinguish between the two when students are opening a browser to begin a lesson.