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On Saturday, across the UK, people are going to learn how to code simple Android apps using MIT AppInventor. The day is being coordinated by BCSWomen and you can sign up here. Signups close tomorrow (Tuesday). There are many reasons behind BCSWomen doing this kind of thing. Firstly, each site will be led by a woman, so we’re putting technical women on the stage. The day is open to kids and families, so we’re helping to show kids that coding is creative and can be something they can do. We’re hoping for a bit of publicity for us (women in tech, the BCS, etc.) too.Read More →

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For the last two weeks I’ve had a work experience student in working on AppInventor stuff. When she started, she’d never done any coding before, so I set her off on updating the materials for the AppInventor Family Fun Day. … and the materials are now ready Check the Family Fun Day page for fully updated materials, ready for AppInventor 2. Free, creative commons licensed one-day android programming workshop, now fully up to date again. AND she got an app on Google Play Check out PieSplat! A custard pie app where you can change the target image, and play either Whack-a-mole style or by flingingRead More →

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Last week I was invited – by the lovely Graham Lee – to talk about mobile code at the QCon London conference. I said that the most interesting thing I’d been doing in the mobile sphere was my AppInventor workshop for kids (the BCSWomen App Inventor Family Fun Day) and so I talked about that, with the title Creating Apps with 6-Year Old Girls (and their Dads) (BTW slides are available from that last link). I’ve done loads of conference speaking in the past, but the vast majority of it has been at computer vision conferences, or at women in tech gigs. Mainstream technology conferences,Read More →

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This post details the steps I had to go through to get my eee-pad transformer Android tablet to talk to a linux machine running Ubuntu for development purposes. In particular, I’m trying to get it to run with AppInventor (a draggy-block-style easy programming environment). There are lots of FAQs and HOWTOs on the net out there, but the straightforward instructions didn’t work for me so I’m putting the things I’ve learned up here, in case someone else can benefit. I’m guessing this post won’t be of interest to you unless you’re trying to mess about with android, running Linux, and haven’t managed to get developmentRead More →