Coding for Good: Brownie App Development

The third badge in the Coding for Good Series is App Development.  You can review the badge insert here. According to GSUSA, "when I've earned this badge, I'll know about user-centered design and the process computer scientists use to develop apps".  As with the other progressive badges, the badge insert provides information on the subject but no activities.  The plans for earning the badges are on VTK, and they are what will be summarized in this post.

Requirements

To earn the App Development badge, Brownies explore how computer scientists develop apps. They decompose a problem to break it into smaller parts. They use what they've learned to design app screens, add algorithms and events to show how users interact with the app, and share their app idea for user feedback.

• Step One: Discover how apps can be used for good
• Step Two: Decompose the needs of their app user
• Step Three: Design their app screens
• Step Four: Create algorithms for their app that include events
• Step Five: Share and improve their app with user feedback

Arrival Activity

The VTK plans have the girls working together to put together a jigsaw puzzle when they arrive.

Learn about Apps

In the opening discussion, the girls divide apps into those that entertain, those that help you learn and those that help you solve problems.  Then they are given the problem of keeping a student actress/singer on track for rehearsals, studying her script, going to lessons and getting homework done. Girls are asked for features that should be included in this app.  

Deconstruction and User-Centered Design

Girls are divided into two teams and each is given a problem--basically the story of another girl who needs to keep up with a busy schedule.  Each team designs questions for their end-user and then asks those questions of the other team, who try to answer them as the first team's user would.  The leader talks about decomposition--breaking big problems into smaller chunks and how this is used in app development,

Screen Design

Next the teams take their problems and their notes and draw at least four screens from the app they would develop to meet the need of their characters.  The leader gives an example that would help the drama student. This is the end of meeting one.

Feedback

The girls start the second meeting by showing their drawings to other girls, who pretend to be the end-user and provide feedback.  

Opening

In the opening ceremony for the second meeting, the leader reviews the three purposes of apps, the concept of user-centered design and decomposition.  She then tells them that today they will add events to their screens, share the apps with each other and solicit feedback.  She points out that an algorithm is a set of steps to do something and that an event is an action that makes something happen.  For example, pushing a button can cause an algorithm to run.

Add Events and Algorithms to Your App

After discussing what an event is and how it is used in creating an app, the leader demonstrates how adding a "calendar" button to an app links to an algorithm that closes the home screen and opens the calendar screen.  Girls then add buttons to various pages on their app, using colored pencils, markers or crayons.  

VTK Resources

As I've said on other posts summarizing VTK plans, if you decide to do this badge, I highly recommend going to VTK and reviewing the entire plan, including the talking points.  Especially with these progressive badges, the talking points in VTK are the "meat" of the badge.  The badges were really designed to be earned via the VTK plans.

VTK comes with a lot of resources for this badge.  They include:

• Sample App Screens:  The leader uses these to show girls an example of how an app should look
• App Problems:  These are character descriptions of the people the girls are designing apps for
• Girl Survey:  Same survey that is part of all the recent STEM meeting plans
• Glossary:  List of words used in Coding for Good badges and definitions
• Materials list:  Gives things needed for each meeting, as well as instructions on how to prepare for the meeting
• Notes for Volunteers:  Nine page document that gives information about the Coding for Good series, tells you to read the directions and then gives a short summary of each meeting
• Think Pair Share:  These directions are given with almost every badge
• Plug It In: Description of the Codespark Academy activities related to this series, and the solutions to the problems
• Parents' Guide:  5 simple ways to spark her interest in coding

My Comments

This is clearly a lesson plan, and, in my opinion, a very school-like lesson plan.  This is a badge I would not do unless a majority of girls were clearly calling for it, and understood that they would be creating a design for an app, but that they would not be using  a computer or actually creating something that worked.

Codespark Academy has an activity on their website that includes events that is recommended for use with this badge, but I cannot see the site now.   It just does not sound to me like it clearly relates to the idea of developing a design for an app. While the VTK materials mention the website, they do not talk about integrating the activities into a meeting plan for the badge, and even if I have the computers available, I do not want to spend an entire meeting/event watching the girls play on a website. 

In short, I can see where GSUSA is going with this badge, but honestly, to me, it does not sound like much fun (and I like computers) and the concepts are repeats of those introduced in Think Like a Programmer and the Robotics badges. 

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay