#“Mini-Review of Google App Inventor Beginner’s Guide by Ralph Roberts”
The nice people in Packt Publishing sent me a free review copy ofGoogle App Inventor Beginner's Guide by Ralph Roberts recently. As someone who adores App Inventor, I was thrilled to see the book being published. I'll do a full review later as I haven'tfinishedit yet but I wanted to get some initial thoughts out there as I think the book is worth buying.
There are two big problems with App Inventor at the moment. One isobviouslythe shutdown by Google in three days time, before MIT is ready to take it over. I think this is a bad mistake by Google and means a lot of the goodwill towards the project may be lost. Luckily MIT is releasing early versions of the code so you can setup your own server. This will allow some of us to keep going in the gap period.
The second problem is the quality of the initial tutorial material. Whilst the examples are of kid-friendly Apps, the descriptions are far too technical and concise. I've had to re-write some of them for a non-technical Primary School audience and even the re-writes have needed simplifying.
So a book like this is really badly needed by educators and overall I'd recommend purchasing it if you want to get to grips with App Inventor. I only have two real criticisms. It's very obvious they have quickly hacked in some mentions of the Google shutdown. A 2nd Edition will probably be required in March/April once the MIT move is complete. But that's hardly the author's/publisher's fault.
The second criticism is that I think the first few chapters need a re-do. They flip between extremely simplistic descriptions and details like setting up Linux device drivers. This makes it quite confusing for beginners. They should pick one platform (Windows really) and base everything on that. All the nitty gritty of Linux/Mac etc should move to the Appendices. Also the Emulator and connecting to phones shouldn't be mentioned until it is time to run the first tutorial App. In fact, rather than going through each feature in each screen one-by-one whether basic or advanced, Chapters 1/2 should consist of a very basic tutorial from going to the App Inventor site to running on the emulator or phone.
Once they get into actual tutorials, the book flows quite well. I'd love to see a stripped down version of it for kids K-12 that could accompany the main book for maybe $2-$3 per child. I know 60 who'd love to have something they could bring home after school!