UROP Projects
UROP Projects in App Inventor (updated April 4, 2012)
These opportunities are for MIT students only
MIT has started a new Center on Mobile Learning, and we have UROP slots for work in educational computing and mobility. Most of the opportunities major involve MIT App Inventor, a Web-based programming tool that lets anyone, create their own apps for Android smartphones. We're bringing up a large-scale public Web service to let young people all over the world create their own mobile applications and to let schools all over the world include mobile app programming in their middle and high school curriculum.
UROP projects can range anywhere from developing new curriculum and programming language features and trying these with kids and teachers, to doing critical systems development and design work on a global-scale Web service for tens of thousands of users.
Positions are available for the summer. If you're interested, you should
- Begin by talking to some of the students on the App Inventor team: Aubrey Colter (ajcolter@mit.edu), Wei Li (wli17@mit.edu), and Jesse Sharps (jsharps@mit.edu).
- Go to the MIT App Inventor site at appinventor.mit.edu to learn about App Inventor. Follow the instructions under Getting Started to play with the system and create a couple of apps, and do a couple of the tutorials.
- After you've done this, send email both to Hal Abelson (hal@mit.edu) and to Andrew McKinney (mckinney@mit.edu) describing your what projects you've built with App Inventor (above). Also describe your background -- especially any experience with Java or Android -- and your interest and availability.
Here are some projects we're looking for help with:
Join the App Inventor development team
Become part of the core team that is providing an extensive web service to a community of 100 thousand users. Fix bugs, add features, moderate the community forums, set new development priorities.
Collect and Curate App Inventor curriculum
There have been several people creating App Inventor curriculum. We need help in collecting and curating this material and setting up a worldwide App Inventor curriculum resource.
Add new features to App Inventor
Extend App Inventor by adding new components, improving the programming language, and incorporating more capabilities of the Android platform. Examples might be a Maps component or Near Field Communication.
Create new learning activities and curriculum units
Explore new ideas for teaching science, math, and technology using App Inventor. Create preliminary
curriculum units and try them out with kids.
Support the App Inventor user community
Play an active role on the user forums, collect bugs and feature requests, and see that these are addressed. Become a leader and a moderator in a community to thousands to teachers, students, and hobbyists.