Tutorials to Help You Get Started Creating Apps in Your Classroom

The MIT App Inventor is a fantastic tool for any teacher who would like to have his or her students try their hands at creating a working Android app.

The MIT App Inventor works in your web browser (Chrome is recommended). The only download that is required for App Inventor 2 is the optional emulator. The emulator allows people who don't have Android devices to text their apps on their desktops. If you have an Android device then the emulator is not required and you don't need to worry about installing it. MIT provides excellent support documentation and curriculum for classroom use for new users of App Inventor. Tutorials are available as videos and as written PDFs. A couple of the videos are embedded below.

CS First - Lesson Plans for Teaching Computer Science

CS First is an initiative from Google to promote computer science classes and clubs in schools. CS First features computer science lesson plans based on nine themes. Within each theme you will find up to ten hours of activities to conduct with your students. The themes in CS First are storytelling, friends, fashion & design, art, social media, sports, game design, music, and animation,

The activities in CS First are based on the Scratch programming interface. The lesson plans are intended for use with elementary school and middle school students.

The lesson plans on CS First are quite detailed. In fact, they might be too detailed at times as they even include instructions like telling students to sit down. Beyond the lesson plans CS First offers a thorough set of training materials for teachers who have not previously taught computer science and or previously used Scratch.

Applications for Education
CS First could be a good resource to help teachers get started in learning computer science with their students. CS First emphasizes creating computer science clubs. The materials in CS First will give your club plenty of things to do. However, once your students get the hang of Scratch, they'll probably want to break out of the prescribed steps of the CS First activities.