EDTECH 597 – Week 12

This week we focused on working on our component design of our final project. Although I had already spent a considerable amount of time on my final project throughout the semester, I used this week to tweak some of my design. I found this week to be an excellent opportunity to reflect on what I’ve learned and apply it to my design. Secondly, I found that the peer review discussion board provided great feedback for me that I hope to apply to my final project – including the suggestion to standardizing the size and layout of the answer choices.

Also, this week was the last of our required reflective posts. I found these posts to be helpful throughout the semester as they provided an opportunity to look back at what I’ve done and take a moment to think about my final project. I believe I would not have arrived at my final project topic as early as I did without the help of the reflection journals. With reflective posts no longer required, I look forward to focusing entirely on completing my app for final submission!

EDTECH 597 – Week 11

This week we worked on our final project proposal. It was a fairly bittersweet moment. It seemed like a ton of work and locked us into a project, but at the same time felt rewarding to finally be reaching this stage of the course! For my final project I am completing a math game focused on quick recall of basic math. I hope that is educational for new learners and fun (and somewhat addicting) for experienced users. I have the majority of my app finished, as I have been working on it for several weeks. My head start should allow me to spend the remaining weeks tweaking the design and getting as many bugs out as possible.

Also this week, I reviewed several classmates’ proposal. I was really intrigued by a lesson plan proposal. I know my wife struggles sometimes with substitute teachers understanding lesson plans but the app being proposed may help. It may provide additional notes or historical data of the lesson’s usage in the past. Those items might help a substitute teacher understand what is expected and get an idea of what has worked (or hasn’t worked) in the past.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s final projects unfold over the next few weeks!

EDTECH 597 – Week 10

This week’s assignment was to develop a customized “Presidents Quiz” app. I found this assignment to be fun and a good exercise to manage multiple lists

For my app I chose to create a “quiz” around professional athletes. The app randomly selects an image and associated hint from a list of 10 available current or former professional athletes. The user can select an answer from a drop-down and check their answer. I chose to use a ListPicker instead of a text entry box for this assignment as some people might struggle with proper spelling of the athletes’ names. Providing a list for selection allows for users to answer correctly regardless of their spelling ability.

I reviewed a couple of projects that my classmates built. I found that like me, they stuck fairly close to the original intent of the app. They each presented an app that displays a picture with a question and allowed users to enter and submit their answer. I think this “quiz” element will be useful for many of my classmates’ final projects!

EDTECH 597 – Week 9

This week’s assignment allowed us to practice using the LocationSensor item within the App Inventor. From my previous experience with apps that rely on location, accuracy has been a concern. I was curious to see how well my app would work. I gave my app a thorough testing by visiting and recording locations at several of my relatives’ houses throughout our town. I am happy to report that the LocationSensor within my app ended up being very accurate. I was pleased with the outcome.

For my app, I customized the project in the book by providing several options for “what to find” with the app. I seem to always be misplacing my items, or leaving them at my parents’ house. So I created an app that allows me to track the place where I place my items so that I can find them if I forget where I last put them. If I use this app, it should help me relieve some of my frustration from having to look for items!

My classmates each did a good job, although it appears that everyone chose to do less customization this week than what I am used to seeing. I did enjoy the jogging app that was submitted. It would be useful for exploring a new town or going for a job and finding your way back home. I gave it a short test by jogging through the neighborhood and it worked like a charm.

All in all, this was a fun week and experience with the LocationSensor!

EDTECH 597 – Week 8

This week’s assignment was very valuable for the direction of my future app development. In this lesson we covered the ActivityStarter tool. The ActivityStarter tool allows a newly developed app to access existing application functions such as Google Maps or the Browser. I think this integration with other apps is a great feature as developers can leverage the power of already functioning apps that users already enjoy and work it into new apps. It saves time in designing the similar functionality and provides an opportunity for enhanced experiences in a manner that users are already familiar.

For my assignment, I chose to provide a fun “national tour” of famous UFO/alien related locations. I further customized the app by adding a second button that would allow users to learn more about the selected location by either reading about the site or viewing a YouTube video. This assignment was both fun and rewarding! I think I will be able to find new and interesting ways to use the ActivityStarter tool in the future!

I think each of my classmates did a great job. I particularly liked the Lincoln Art Walk project that had two buttons, each linking to Google Maps. One set provided general map view and the other leveraged the power of street view. I think this app would be useful for anyone looking to visit Lincoln for the art walk!

EDTECH 597 – Week 7

This week’s app was fun to build and should be useful for my final project app. Learning to use the OrientationSensor and multiple ImageSprites on a canvas was rewarding. I can see multiple uses for these tools. The OrientationSensor would be great for a mobile app version of an old computer game I used to play – Marble Madness. In Marble Madness, players had to use the arrow keys on the keyboard or a joystick to navigate a marble down various paths. It became quite challenging. I could see using the OrientationSensor to direct the marble in a mobile version.

For my app, I thought the original intent of the game within the book was great so I stuck fairly close to what was prescribed. I changed my ImageSprites to represent Justin Bieber and his attempt to escape a teen fan. To customize the app, I provided custom art and a splash screen.

In reviewing my classmates’ work, I found that everyone did an excellent job. I enjoyed playing each of my classmates’ apps and especially enjoyed Kristie Lormand’s app as she decided to take an interesting story-based approach to the game. All in all, this was a fun week of study and a great exercise!

EDTECH 597 – Week 6

This week’s assignment was to develop the “No Texting While Driving” app. This type of app is very applicable to today’s world. I live close to West Virginia, which just implemented new no-texting and hands free driving laws. This would be quite useful for West Virginia residents. I enjoyed creating this app and was intrigued by the level of ease with incorporating text messaging and text-to-speech functionality. I could see multiple ways that my organization could utilize both of these items, specifically for delivering feedback to trainees as they complete learning activities with the aid of their smartphones.

For my design, I made simple modifications based around cosmetic changes, rather than much functionality changes. I spent some time creating a specific logo for the app using Adobe Photoshop. I incorporated the logo within the app and as the app’s icon.

I reviewed my classmates’ apps and each did a great job as well. I enjoyed that some included additional functionality like adding departure time and location options. By itself, the app as designed by the book standards is great and useful. Although I only made minor modifications, I learned quite a bit about text messaging, text-to-speech, and TinyDB. These items will be crucial for my final project app and any further app development that I may do.

EDTECH 597 – Week 5

This week provided a good opportunity to dive into more detailed game based functionality. It also gave me my first experience with trouble using the development app. I experienced quite a bit of issue with getting my sounds to load/play correctly after packaging. I know other students experienced packaging issues, so I assume that this may be affecting my app as well. For example, I applied a vibrate option to two sets of sounds. During my testing, the vibration request did not work, so I removed it from the app. Still, one of my classmates reported that the vibration occurred for them or that the sound did not play. That was very frustrating to hear. Other than the sound related issues, I had no other problems with the assignment.

As stated above, the assignment provided opportunity for deeper interactivity within the game play. I especially liked that the tool comes with the random integer functionality easily packaged for use. That made the random movement much easier. I was expecting to have to do complex math in order to get the random moving to work properly. Secondly, I liked that included transparency remained intact when using PNGs. I used two PNG sprites instead of JPGs and my transparent background was evident. I think this provided a much cleaner look.

As far as gameplay goes, my game is fairly basic. I let my 2-year old son play the game and it was quite a challenge. He found that the movement was a little too fast for him. With that in mind, my game should probably be geared towards slightly older children and/or adults.

EDTECH 597 – Week 4

This week we completed the Paint Pot application. For my app, I decided to create a simple outline of face in Photoshop and use it as my canvas. I further customized the app by adding an extra color, sound to the buttons, and an accelerometer option of shaking to wipe the screen. Although minor, I also renamed the app’s screen and provided an app icon. From this process there are two items that stood out to me. First, integration of camera elements was much easier that I expected. I thought the app inventor would be able to create simple functionality features well, but I didn’t think we’d be able to tap into the camera function so easily. This was a great exercising and encouraging to see some of the potential power within the app we design. Secondly, this assignment revealed to me my preference for writing code vs. creating these blocks. This visual interface of the blocks makes it easier, but I find it a little cumbersome to try to manage and go back and forth between blocks and shelves of functionality. I think I’d prefer to write the code line by line. It may be that I am used to writing code, or that my undergrad degree had multiple computer programming courses that influenced my thinking, but I feel like I would be much more organized and efficient if I could write code to declare my own variables, create functions, and attach listeners.

Aside from my own project, I have reviewed several of my classmates projects. Each of us took a slightly different twist, but arrived at functioning apps that were similar in nature. I particularly liked the initiative of one of my classmates to discover how to change the radius of the drawing line thickness. The assignment walked us through changing the dot size, but not the line size. I think understanding how to declare a variable is useful. Again, I’d prefer to do this in code than in blocks as it seems more natural to me.

Creating this app may have impact for my organization. I showed what I built to my supervisor and we started discussing ways we could incorporate operators using the tool to draw diagrams of their unit or flow of product during processing. Right now the operators use paper and pencil to draw their unit during training, but being able to draw and save/share through a tablet or smartphone might be something we explore. I look forward to the next assignment!

EDTECH 597 – Week 3

For this week we designed the “Hello Purr” app. It was an introductory app that was fairly simple to complete, but was useful in slowly gaining experience with the app inventor tool. I think the textbook was easy to follow and helped to create the app. I did find issue with connecting my Motorola Droid Razr Maxx to the application via USB. My phone has MOTOCAST, that supposedly automatically places the drivers on my computer when connected by USB, but it did not seem to work. In order to remedy the issue, I installed the MIT AICompanion app and used the Wifi connection. This worked perfectly. Once I was able to connect via Wifi, everything seemed to work without issue.

Looking at my own project, I was fairly happy with how it turned out. I chose to use my son’s images and laughter sounds to modify the “Hello Purr” app. I am sure we’ll dive into more detailed design in future weeks of this course, but I would have liked to make my app look cleaner through image alignment and adjustments. I reviewed several of my classmates’ apps and they each were well done! Each person put a different twist on the assignment and made modifications as required.

I see this week’s assignment as an essential building block for future development. Although it has no direct use within my professional life, it provided an introduction and opportunity for basic development within the app inventor tool. I will continue to develop over the course of this class, and hopefully be able to serve my learners with functional and applicable apps in the future. In the meantime, I plan to use what I have learned to create basic apps for my son to play with. Just from this first app alone, he continues to want to grab my phone and make himself laugh.