We recently mentioned that Google was placing App Inventor with Google Labs in the R.I.P area of the digital world. Google did however mention that they would open source the App Inventor project to anyone willing to take it on. MIT has decided to take that role with their new Center for Mobile learning which will be housed in the MIT Media Lab.
Professor of Computer Science, Hal Abelson at MIT had a few words:
App Inventor for Android—a programming system that makes it easy for learners to create mobile apps for Android smartphones—currently supports a community of about 100,000 educators, students and hobbyists. Through the new initiatives at the MIT Center for Mobile Learning, App Inventor will be connected to MIT’s premier research in educational technology and MIT’s long track record of creating and supporting open software.
Google first launched App Inventor internally in order to move it forward with speed and focus, and then developed it to a point where it started to gain critical mass. Now, its impact can be amplified by collaboration with a top academic institution. At MIT, App Inventor will adopt an enriched research agenda with increased opportunities to influence the educational community. In a way, App Inventor has now come full circle, as I actually initiated App Inventor at Google by proposing it as a project during my sabbatical with the company in 2008. The core code for App Inventor came from Eric Klopfer’s lab, and the inspiration came from Mitch Resnick’s Scratch Project. The new center is a perfect example of how industry and academia can collaborate effectively to create change enabled by technology, and we look forward to seeing what we can do next, together.
Its great to see App Inventor being resurrected although hopefully only for those with a little more sense than to create the useless apps it was pushing out previously. Time will tell.