App Inventor

Yes, you can create your own apps for Android phones―and it's easy to do. This extraordinary book introduces App Inventor for Android, a powerful visual tool that lets anyone build apps for Android-based devices. Learn the basics of App Inventor with step-by-step instructions for more than a dozen fun projects, such as creating location-aware apps, data storage, and apps that include decision-making logic.

The second half of the book features an Inventor's manual to help you understand the fundamentals of app building and computer science. App Inventor makes an excellent textbook for beginners and experienced developers alike.

• Design games and other apps with 2D graphics and animation
• Create custom multi-media quizzes and study guides
• Create a custom tour of your city, school, or workplace
• Use an Android phone to control a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT robot
• Build location-aware apps by working with your phone’s sensors
• Explore apps that incorporate information from the Web
• Learn computer science as you build your apps

David Wolber is the Chair of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco, and teaches App Inventor in a course at USF. He worked with the App Inventor team, and authored the advanced tutorials found on the App Inventor site. The apps created by his students– mostly humanities and business majors with no prior programming experience–have been chronicled in articles of The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Tech Crunch, Fortune.CNN.com, and Yahoo News.

Harold (Hal) Abelson, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, has a longstanding interest in using computation as a conceptual framework in teaching. He has played a key role in fostering MIT institutional educational technology initiativeI, and is a founding director of Creative Commons and Public Knowledge. Hal’s book, Turtle Geometry, written with Andrea diSessa in 1981, presented a computational approach to geometry that has been cited as "the first step in a revolutionary change in the entire teaching/learning process."

Ellen Spertus is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Mills College, where she has taught with App Inventor, and a Senior Research Scientist at Google, where she was one of the App Inventor developers. She and her work have been written about in Wired, USA Today (which described her as "a geek with principles"), and in The New York Times (as one of three "women who might change the face of the computer industry"). In addition to her many technical publications, her writings have appeared in the book She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff and in the magazines Technology Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Odyssey: Adventures in Science, and Glamour.

Liz Looney is a senior software engineer at Google, where she helped develop App Inventor and is a member of the Robotics Task Force. She has over 20 years of experience in creating programming tools and holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from The University of New Hampshire.