Track 6 - Mobile Apps and computational systems as learning tools
Authors: Diogo Ramos, P. B. de Moura Oliveira and E. J. Solteiro Pires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hL6ouIXLj4&list=PLboNOuyyzZ85H9KngzY-R31GbiqFcOQbH&index=3
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APP Inventor as a Tool to Reach Students
Diogo Ramos, Paulo Moura Oliveira and E. J. Solteiro Pires
INESC TEC , UTAD Pole, UTAD University
Department of Engineering
School of Sciences and Technology
UTAD University
5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
email: oliveira@utad.pt
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Presentation Layout
1. Introduction and Motivation
2. MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues
3. Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation and Feedback Control
4. Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
5. Preliminary Results
6. Conclusion and Current/Future Work
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Introduction and Motivation
The use of smart phones within university students is increasing.
My experience as a lecturer shows that currently there is a very strong
connection between students and mobile devices.
Mobile applications will be a common tool for teaching and learning
purposes very soon. Students are ready for this change.
The intensive and constant use of smart
phones by students makes it difficult to stop its
use inside the classroom.
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Introduction and Motivation
How fast will teachers be ready to cope
with their development and use of these
technologies?
Decisive aspects that will influence the use of mobile applications for
teaching/learning purposes are:
How can a teacher/student with no specialization in mobile devices
programming develop an application?
For Android devices an answer to the last question can be
the use of MIT App-Inventor 2.
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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues
Designer provides a Palette with several blocks
libraries, allowing building the application user
interface and visualizing it at the same time
Why using the MIT App Inventor?
Uses drag-and-drop programming
methodology with building blocks.
No syntax problems.
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MIT App Inventor 2: Key Issues
The process of designing an application and
make it readily available for testing and use in
a mobile device can be very fast.
Why using the MIT App Inventor?
Using the QR code or provided
character code.
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Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation
and Feedback Control
Applications developed with MIT App-Inventor have been used in UTAD to teach
industrial automation/ feedback control courses:
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Apps for Teaching/Learning Automation
and Feedback Control
eLogicum is a simple application which can be
used to revise basic notions concerning logic
operators.
Global objective of this application is
to bridge the following important
aspects:
i. mathematical representation of
simple logic equations concerning
fundamental operators;
ii. representation of those equations
using an electric circuit;
iii. Ladder Logic Diagram
representation.
AND OR
NOT XOR
EDGES INFO
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Automatum
The Automatum application was developed to support courses of
Industrial Automation and Control in the UTAD University in
Portugal.
While the Application
texts are (at this stage)
in Portuguese, for
exposition sake some
of its components are
translated here to
English.
Topics
Quizzes
Problems
Tutorials
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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
Teach2Student(T2S) and Student2Teach(S2T) were developed two link teachers
and students.
Teach2Student
Enables teachers:
• to post their students
courses main class’s issues.
• provide students with
specific quizzes.
Student2Teach
Enables students:
• to visualize the posts and
perform quizzes submitted
by their teachers.
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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
After registering and
sign in the teacher can
manage until four
courses
Teacher2Student
In this case
the course
is Industrial
Automation
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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
A maximum of 5 Posts can be prepared and sent
to Student2Teach, per lecture.
Two types of quizzes can be selected by teachers:
Teacher2Student
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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as to
insert the question and answers.
Teacher2Student
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Teach2Student and Student2Teach Apps
After selecting the quiz type, the teacher as to
insert the question and answers.
Teacher2Student
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Preliminary Results
Student2Teach application was tested in a course with 18 UTAD students
attending to the Automation and Control course from which 9 had an Android
phone.
A survey inquiry with 11 questions was filled by students (see paper for details).
This small sample results
was quite positive and
some suggestions were
already followed in refining
the presented version in
this presentation.:
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Conclusion and Current/Future Work
Applications developed with the MIT App Inventor to teach/learn Industrial
Automation and Control were reported.
Two applications named Teach2Student and Student2Teach were developed to
bridge teachers and students.
Teach2Student enable teachers to send posts and quizzes to their students.
Student2Teach enable students to see the posts and quizzes prepared by students.
Preliminary results obtained with a small sample are positive. However a more
representative sample is necessary to validate these two apps