In June 2007, Apple introduced the primary iPhone. But the corporate made a strategic decision about iPhone software: The latest App Store can be a walled garden. An iPhone user wouldn’t find a way to put in applications that Apple has not verified itself, a minimum of not without violating Apple's terms of service.
However, this business decision left educators out within the cold. They had no strategy to bring the mobile software development that may soon change into a part of on a regular basis life into the classroom. How could a young student code, experiment with, and share apps in the event that they couldn't get them on the App Store?
MIT professor Hal Abelson was on sabbatical at Google on the time as the corporate considered how one can reply to Apple's move to corner the mobile hardware and software market. Abelson recognized the constraints Apple placed on young developers; Google recognized the market need for another open source operating system – the later Android. Both recognized the chance that App Inventor presented.
“Google began the Android project as a response to the iPhone,” says Abelson. “And I used to be there and checked out what we were doing at MIT with educational software logo And Scratchand said, “What a cool thing it could be if kids could create mobile apps too.”
Google software engineer Mark Friedman volunteered to work with Abelson on what later became “Young Android,” soon renamed Google App Inventor. Like Scratch, App Inventor is a block-based language that enables programmers to visually stitch together pre-built “code blocks” without having to learn any special programming syntax.
Friedman describes making the creation of easy mobile apps as easy as possible as novel for the time, particularly for mobile development. “That meant a web-based app,” he says, “where every part was online and no external tools were required, with a straightforward programming model, drag-and-drop user interface design, and block-based visual programming.” That's how an app someone could create in an internet interface might be installed on an Android device.
App Inventor was itching. Buoyed by the explosion of smartphone adoption and the incontrovertible fact that App Inventor is free (and ultimately open source), soon greater than 70,000 teachers with lots of of hundreds of scholars were using it, with Google providing the backend infrastructure to maintain it running.
“I remember answering an issue from my manager at Google who asked what number of users I expected in the primary 12 months,” says Friedman. “I assumed it was about 15,000 – and I remember pondering possibly that was too optimistic. In the tip, I used to be off by an element of 10-20.” Friedman was quick to credit greater than just her decisions regarding the app. “I feel it's fair to say that while a few of that growth is because of the standard of the tool, I don't think you may have in mind the impact that it has from Google and Hal Abelson's popularity and network , might be ignored.”
Some early apps took App Inventor in ambitious, unexpected directions, similar to Discardious, which was developed by teenage girls in Nigeria. Discardious helped business owners and individuals get rid of waste in communities where disposal was unreliable or too cumbersome.
But even before apps like Discardious got here to market, the team knew that Google's support wouldn't be unlimited. No one desired to turn teachers away from a tool that had made them successful, so around 2010, Google and Abelson agreed to bring App Inventor to MIT. The transition required significant staff effort to rebuild App Inventor without Google's proprietary software. However, MIT needed to work with Google to proceed providing the network resources to maintain App Inventor free for the world.
However, with such a big user base, Abelson feared that “the entire thing would collapse” if Google wasn't directly involved.
Friedman agrees. “I actually have to say I had my fears. App Inventor has a reasonably complicated technical implementation that involves multiple programming languages, libraries and frameworks, and by the tip of its time at Google we had a team of about 10 people working on it.”
But not only did Google provide significant funding to support the transfer, but Friedman says of the transfer's ultimate success: “Hal can be in charge and he had a fairly extensive knowledge of the system and naturally had great passion for the vision and .” the product.”
MIT corporate architect Jeffrey Schiller, who built the institute's computer network and have become its director in 1984, played one other key role in sustaining App Inventor after its transition, helping to introduce technical features fundamental to its accessibility and long-term success meaning are. He led the combination of the platform into web browsers, the introduction of WiFi support as a substitute of the necessity to connect phones and computers via USB, and laying the groundwork for technical support of older phones because, as Schiller says, “lots of our users can “Not that.” Hurry up and buy the most recent and costliest equipment.”
These collaborations and contributions over time led to App Inventor's best asset: its user base. As community managers grew and supported, so did the expertise of volunteers. Now, greater than a decade after its launch, App Inventor has recently achieved several key milestones. The most notable is creating its 100 millionth project and registering its 20 millionth user. Young developers proceed to create incredible applications, supported by the advantages of AI. College students created “Brazilian XôDengue” as a way for users to make use of phone cameras to discover mosquito larvae which will transmit the dengue virus. High school students recently developed “Chill out“, a journaling app that uses AI for emotion recognition. And a mother in Kuwait wanted something to assist her navigate the usually overwhelming experience of latest motherhood when returning to work, so she developed the chatbot “PAM (Personal Advisor for Mothers)” as a non-judgmental space to speak concerning the challenges.
App Inventor's long-term sustainability now rests with the App Inventor Foundation, which was established in 2022 to expand its resources and further advance its adoption. It is led by managing director Natalie Lao.
In a letter Speaking to the App Inventor community, Lao emphasized the inspiration's commitment to equitable access to educational resources, which required App Inventor to make a rapid shift toward AI education – but in a way that upholds App Inventor's core values of “a free , open-source, “user-friendly platform” for mobile devices. “Our mission is to not only democratize access to technology,” Lao wrote, “but additionally to advertise a culture of innovation and digital literacy.”
Within MIT, App Inventor today falls under the umbrella of the MIT RAISE Initiative – Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, led by Dean of Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal, Professor Eric Klopfer and Abelson. Together, they can integrate App Inventor into ever-larger communities, events and funding streams, resulting in opportunities just like the premiere this summer AI and Education Summit on July twenty fourth and twenty sixth. At the summit, awards might be given to the winners of a Global AI Hackathon, whose roughly 180 submissions used App Inventor to create AI tools in two areas: Climate & Sustainability and Health & Wellbeing. Since this was one other major project of RAISE, participants were encouraged to attract from it AI Day Curricula, including the most recent courses too Data science and climate change.
“Over the past 12 months, the probabilities for mobile apps have grown tremendously through the combination of AI,” says Abelson. “The opportunity for App Inventor and MIT is to democratize these latest opportunities for young people – and for everybody – as an expanded source of power and creativity.”
