Project Summary

A mobile coding application for elementary school students which recognizes that, for many across the digital divide, cell phones are a primary means of internet access, and will build critical capacity for Chattanooga’s gigabit future.

Project Timeline

Week 1: Core Application Structure; sign-in flows

Week 2: User Interface; HTML lesson structure

Week 3: First learning page completed

Week 4: Second learning page completed

Week 5: Lesson summary and review page; first beta tests

Week 6: HTML lessons completed; learning pathway structure drafted

Week 7: Begin full user testing with partner school

Week 8: Begin drafting JavaScript lessons

Week 9: Complete the first JavaScript lessons

Week 10: Draft remaining JavaScript lessons

Week 11: Continuing work on JavaScript lessons; app artwork

Week 12: Public through the App Store, bug fixes

Project Partners

We plan to partner with a local classroom, where we will be working with their students teaching them how to program in HTML for the first time. In return, they will provide us much needed feedback with regards to the pace and difficulty of our lessons.

Metrics and Outcomes

Technical Outcomes

We plan to create the first Android application that makes it easy to learn how to program for the web by using a mobile phone or tablet. Our pilot is taking place in Chattanooga, where in conjunction with a local partnering classroom we hope to gain valuable insight and real-world input on our teaching mechanics. This knowledge will help us perfect the app before releasing it worldwide.

Learning Outcomes

While working with our partnering facilities and schools, we plan to reach 25 to 50 people and teach them each the foundation blocks for coding on the web. Specifically we plan for them to be:

• introduced to how things work on the web
• taught how to code HTML
• less intimidated by computer programming

We plan to measure these outcomes using a variety of techniques. First, our application is designed to log every action a user performs. Then, with each action logged, we can perform strong statistical analyses on the data. Second, we plan to perform observation analyses to measure how each user responds to the user interface, to the flow, and to each individual question and answer. Last, in conjunction with our partner classroom, we plan to give them a short test or evaluation both before and after using our application. This assessment should provide key metrics to ensure that students are really learning by using the app.

Community Outcomes

The target of this application is to teach the next generation of users how to create new applications and web sites that we can’t even imagine by making it simple and fun to learn to program. Since the entire project is on github, other people can contribute or adapt the code for use with other programming languages, math, or any other subjects. Additionally, we would like to add more programming languages and tutorials ourselves.

Visuals

Below are some screenshots from our alpha version.

Learn More

Our project progress will be documented via weekly updates on our blog blog.devlearnapp.com. You can also find us on Twitter @devlearnapp. Our github repository is here https://github.com/duncaningram/devLearn.