Starting Out with App Inventor for Android

In Starting Out with App Inventor for Android, Tony Gaddis and Rebecca Halsey teach the fundamentals of programming while simultaneously showing students how to create fun, useful, and imaginative apps. Because App Inventor allows students to create apps and see them running on a phone, programming becomes a personally meaningful skill. Gaddis’s highly accessible, step-by-step presentation presents all the details needed to understand the “how” and the “why”-but never loses sight of the fact that most novice programmers struggle with this material. His gradual approach ensures that readers understand the logic behind developing high-quality programs. Teaching and Learning Experience This program presents a better teaching and learning experience-for you and your students. It will help:

• Engage Students with Dynamic Mobile Apps: Students not only learn how to create their own apps, they can actually see them run on their phone or the Android emulator.
• Enhance Learning with the Gaddis Approach: Gaddis’s accessible approach features clear and easy-to-read code listings, concise real-world examples, and exercises in every chapter.
• Motivate Learning: When students learn they can easily create their own mobile apps, they become motivated to learn programming-whether that is in the CSO or CS1 course.
• Integrate App Inventor in the Classroom: App Inventor can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom, and this text is designed to accommodate all of them.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction to Programming and App Inventor
Chapter 2 Working with Media
Chapter 3 Input, Variables, and Calculations
Chapter 4 Decision Blocks and Boolean Logic
Chapter 5 Repetition Blocks, Times, and Dates
Chapter 6 Procedures and Functions
Chapter 7 Lists
Chapter 8 Storing Data on the Device
Chapter 9 Graphics and Animation
Chapter 10 Working with Text
Chapter 11 Text to Speech and Text Messaging
Chapter 12 Sensors
Chapter 13 Other App Inventor Capabilities
Appendix A Setting Up App Inventor
Appendix B Connecting an Android Device to App Inventor
Appendix C Uploading Your Application to App Inventor Gallery and Google Play Store
Appendix D Component Reference
Appendix E Answers to Checkpoints