Google announced last week that it was ending support for its App Inventor for Android — a software tool that anyone can use to create Android applications even if they have no programming experience. But the company said it was looking for ways to allow App Inventor to live on as an open-source project since it had proven popular with educators and students.
Now MIT has announced the launch of a new program focused on using mobile computing in education. The first focus of the new MIT Center for Mobile Learning will be App Inventor.
The idea is that once Google release the source code for App Inventor, MIT will work to extend the platform.
Interestingly, MIT played a key role in the initial development of Google App Inventor. MIT’s Hal Abelson proposed the original idea for the software in 2008, and App Inventor’s user interface bears a close resemblance to Scratch software developed by MIT’s Mitchel Resnick — which was also designed as a way for students and others to build software applications without any previous programming experience.
via Hack Education
