App Inventor is the elementary school way to develop apps. It’s targeted towards first time “developers” using building blocks as its method for logical instructions in telling the computer what to do. Below is an my attempt in using App Inventor.
Quack
Now this was a rollercoaster of successes and failures. The ease of creating an account in App Inventor and familiarizing myself with its components was simple enough (along with the in-class demo). The site had a plethora of how-to videos and instructions on how to develop and download the necessary elements to create an app, including the Emulator.
Now I wanted to try replicate Professor Von Hollen’s giraffe app using a platypus instead. And with little difficulty, I was able to download a picture of a Platypus and a mp3 file of a duck sound since that’s what I assumed the natural platypus sounds like. So by organizing such files under the designer tab of the App Inventor using Image, Sound, and Button, I was able to coordinate the steps or “If…then statement” in the blocks tab where I used the building blocks to direct a button to “quack” when pressed. However, when trying to execute that in the Designer block, it didn’t work. The Platypus was there, a button named “Quack” was there, the mp3 file was downloaded, but nothing was being heard. After several attempts to try to fix the situation using different blocks, different mp3 files, and different buttons…nothing worked…so I just moved on.
At least I had the platypus picture.
So I successfully downloaded the Emulator (called Automator in my computer) and was able to download the app into an .apk file into it. This is when things get murky. So I successfully created an app file, named it Quack, enabled it, and put it on my desktop to open. However…it didn’t. Somehow my Platypus just disappeared into an empty app file that wouldn’t open because maybe it’s not recognized or it didn’t download correctly or simply I fucked up someway somehow and my platypus just got lost in the tech sauce….expired tech sauce.
Ultimately, it was a fail. But I did some things right, some things wrong. Hopefully, my next attempt wouldn’t be so wonky and I’ll actually know what I’m doing. And maybe, just maybe…my Platypus will start quacking. 🙂
Danielle Cabansay
Florida State University
Danielle's Hero Acadamia 