Resources Update
Students use FREE App Inventor from Google and MIT to create Android Apps in the classroom
In August 2011, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Computer Society asked Jeremy Scott to exemplify the teaching of Computing Science to Scotland’s junior high school students. Here’s his App Inventor story
For over twenty years, desktop operating systems were the basis of most students’ experience of Computing. Today’s learners have a different experience of Computing: it’s on-line, social and increasingly mobile. Computing devices have become more tactile and personal, the result of convergence of numerous technologies from multi-touch to motion-sensing and GPS.
During the research phase of my project, it became clear that App Inventor offered a way to tap into these developments and provide students with an experience of Computing Science that’s not only fun and exciting, but real world. It’s even possible – with a bit of effort – to get students’ apps on the Android Marketplace. Wow!
So, with help from Professors Dave Wolber of University of San Francisco and Hal Abelson of MIT, I blended aspects of the App Inventor EDU course with my own ideas to create a mobile app development course that I believe delivers Computing Science in a way that’s up-to-date and relevant to students’ own digital lives.
Dave Wolber was absolutely right when he said to me: Mobile app development is this crazy motivator for students!, as the feedback from schools piloting the course was overwhelmingly positive.
Here’s the experience of Peter Donaldson, Head of Computing Science at Crieff High School in Perthshire:
I delivered mobile app development to a class of 14-year-old students over a period of 6 weeks. Some setup work was required to install App Inventor and the mobile phone drivers but after that there were no major technical problems. Setup was also well-documented on the App Inventor website. A word of caution: the emulator’s great, but it can only test some parts of an application, so you’ll want real handsets to test some phone-specific features. We found that one handset between four students was a good ratio. The pupils fully engaged with the activities and I didn’t have to give a single warning for low level disruption to anyone throughout the trial period. Screencasts worked well for providing further individual support and for absent students to catch up, but shouldn’t replace class demonstration and questioning.
At the end of the trial, I asked my students for feedback. Here’s what they said:
- I enjoyed the mobile app development because it’s a nice and simple way to create android apps. I found it very easy so I don’t think that they could make it any better.
- I liked the apps and how the code controls the phones. I also like the emulator as it makes it feel like the app you’ve created is running like the real thing.
- I think that the level of customisation on the design screen makes the apps fun to make. Also I like the simplicity of the blocks editor; it’s easy and quick to use.
- The thing I enjoyed about App Inventor is the real features you can control with the apps you create
App Inventor lets you bring mobile app development into the classroom. It’s free. It’s easy to use. Students latch onto it like you won’t believe.
What are you waiting for?
Jeremy Scott is Head of Computing Science at George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh, Scotland
App Inventor can be used with a low cost mini Android PC instead of a mobile phone where you have more control over students activities
Xorro-Q from Edis - voting software without any special hardware. Xorro-Q enables an audience or class to interact with the presenter’s computer and any interactive display or white board, using their own mobile devices: laptops, mobile phones, i-Pads or tablets.
Teachers and presenters can send questions to participants' devices, who can vote and reply in text. No need for expensive, bulky and laborious hand held devices. Results are displayed for all to share.
Xorro-Q is a unique response solution that provides presenters and organisers with the ability to question participants without the need to distribute handheld devices, and can be used in small group training sessions or in a large auditorium of 200 people or more.
Xorro is a web based question system where participants can login using any internet enabled device such as an iPad, tablet, smart phone or laptop. They answer questions in different formats including a basic A, B, C style or with full text answers.
Questions can be created on the fly, or setup beforehand using the session leader's own web facilitator page. The facilitator page allows the question creator to create the questions, review the results from previous sessions, as well as decide when they want the questions to become live. If the questions are part of an organisation wide survey, then the question creator can choose to have the questions running for an extended period.
Moodle e-learning is absolutely brilliant but is not usually an off the shelf item for Primary Schools UNLESS you get a version of Moodle just for Primary Schools with lessons and all the content you need configured into Year Groups, Subjects, and Lessons for each term.
Moodle lets you keep all your lessons online with links to interactive sites, with learning games and lesson content. You can use it directly in the classroom on an Interactive Whiteboard or Touch Screen or individually on PC or laptop. Pupils can see their work at home and show mum and dad too !
As you probably know, Moodle is Open Source, the software is FREE it just needs loading and setting up for your users, so it is the lowest cost e-learning system available. It's also the most popular and by far the most used e-learning system in the World with everything that goes with that - continuous improvements and huge amounts of help and advice for teachers.
Ofsted put a tick in your box if you use Moodle - and if you use a special Primary School Moodle your pupils will gain enormous benefit and excellent learning outcomes not to mention the ease of use for you
School Website Now specialise in School website design and have created a version of Moodle just for Primary Schools. You can see the full features and a demonstation of their Moodle for Primary Schools here. School Website Now set-up Primary School Moodle for you on your school website, they can also host it on a server if you like, they upload all your users - this Primary School version includes masses of resources with lessons already set up in year groups and subjects and it's easy to add new content from the resources area to your own lessons
Finding e-Learning Resources on the Internet
Part of the Moodle For Dummies Cheat Sheet
Moodlers around the world are a great bunch of people who love to help and share their knowledge and resources. So when you become an expert or find something that has really worked for you, share it with the Moodle community. The following is a (partial) list of useful Moodle resources you can find on the Internet:
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Moodle news: This is the official Moodle.org news site, informing you of all things Moodle. It’s a good place to start looking for information or to validate what you read elsewhere.
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Moodle demo site: Here you can look at existing example sites in a number of different languages. You can build your own course and log in as a teacher, as an administrator, or as a student. You don’t have to worry about mistakes because every 20 minutes the server refreshes back to its original form.
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Moodle monthly news: Moodle news, information, and resources, including popular posts, blogs, and many links.
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Moodlers online: Moodle users have created a Ning networking site for a place to share Moodle info. (You must receive an invitation to join the Ning.)
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Thomaz Lasic is an avid user of Moodle, a teacher, and is now also a member of the Moodle development team. His Human blog was a great resource and is now a website.
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Moodle is an Open Source (Free) Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for schools, colleges and universties. It's very popular around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for puils and students. It operates on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting company.
What is Moodle?
The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning, but there are many ways to use Moodle:
- Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist.
- Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning).
- Many of our users love to use the activity modules (such as forums, databases and wikis) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter (in the social constructionist tradition), while others prefer to use Moodle as a way to deliver content to students (such as standard SCORM packages) and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.
Edis Education offers a full install, set-up, user uploads and a maintain service for Moodle linked to or as a part of a website - Moodle is free GNU open source software ... we charge only for the set-up and related costs. Contact us for more details
Visit the moodle site here for more information