Games on Smart Phones

Hope IT has offered this course twice, in February 2019, and in Sept/Oct of 2024.

In February 2019, we created games on the Android phone (and since then expanded to iPhones), using App Inventor, created by MIT.  App Inventor uses blocks instead of code syntax that is typed in, to allow young learners quickly create apps, while beginning to learn programming concepts.  It’s fun!

How does it work?  We explain this in the course, but here’s the idea.

  1. One creates the games on a browser (so Chromebooks can work here), as the user interface is really just a web site, and web pages.
  2. You connect your Smart phone (iPhone or Android) by installing an “AI Companion”, the “MIT App Inventor 2” app.
  3. You use the QR Code created on the web page to connect your phone to run your project using the installed app.
  4. You need to be over 13, as a Google account (Gmail account) is the way to login to the AppInventor web page.  Here’s how to create a Google account: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en.  It’s pretty easy, and we’ll cover this in the course, if needed.

Additionally, here’s a quick link on the e-book to learn more about App Inventor.

We offered this course in a 6 week format to high schoolers in the Stars after-school program in Sept/Oct. of 2024.   This was a much better course for youth now, as AppInventor expanded their platform to work with iPhone, which most high schoolers have.  Below is the link to our lesson plan for that course.

HopeIT-LessonPlan-Games for Smart Phones

Lastly, we noticed it’s hard to find our Projects in the AppInventor Gallery.  For easy reference, we put the links to our Gallery Projects below.  These are projects to also assist students that missed a week, so they can easily catch up in the next week’s lessons.

Week 2 start projects:

1)Talk To Me catch-up project: https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=7e8a69fa-f87a-4fc4-ab49-53fc8b08bcd2

2) BallBounce – Step1:  https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=6409975671422976

 

Week 4 start projects:

1) Ball Bounce – Step 2: https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=84c3f0d7-594d-48bf-b124-b38a77b3b442

2) Green/Red Sensor: https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=95c05413-2de1-4aed-951e-0db8bd3aca4c

 

Week 5 start projects:

1) Ball Bounce – Step 3: https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=e057ba77-e043-49fb-9fbe-962bcead7ed2

 

Week 6 start projects:

1) Ball Bounce – Step 4: https://gallery.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryid=72abec63-0769-467a-825e-a8203f33eda4