Mrs. Costello: The night before the Expo

This past week has been jam-packed.  A lot of teachers around the building gave up their free periods so I could clear my schedule for Startup Tech.  I had kids in my room half the day working.  On Saturday, at 1am, I woke up because my phone chimed to let me know I had an e-mail…from one of my students who was still trying to get a feature working.  I didn't get much sleep myself, because I had so much to do - communicate with the judges, make ballots, name tags, and award certificates, and on and on.   We had a film crew in the building most of the day Tuesday, so my classroom also had to get cleaned up from the disaster-mess of trifold board building!  My lesson plan for the day after the Expo read simply, "COLLAPSE."  Hey, it's measurable!

The best advice I can give a teacher who is doing Startup Tech is, have a Mock Judging.  Not only did it light a fire under some kids who NEEDED to be scared a little, but there were a lot of lessons learned for me as well.  For example, we discovered that we couldn't rely on our WiFi, so all apps had to be downloaded to devices.  We also discovered that the simplified judging rubric I made was still not user-friendly enough, so I had to re-design that.  These and a thousand other lessons were better learned at Mock Judging than at the real thing, in front of high profile guest judges!

We spent a lot of time this week polishing the "soft skills," like eye contact and delivery.  One student whispered, and another needed to "turn down the coffee."  I have to remember that they are 12 and 13.  They have never been in a professional environment.  These skills are completely new to them.  If they learn nothing else from Startup Tech but a professional voice and demeanor, they will have a vital skill for life success.

I was really proud of the way my students worked.  There was a lot of teamwork, both within individual groups and with other groups pitching in to help those who were behind or who were having trouble with a certain thing.  Students who couldn't come to school called in - at one point, I had 3 speaker phones in my face while I taught.  They really are taking this seriously, and I think it will show tomorrow.  Besides the judges, a lot of students have friends and family coming, and we have students from around the school who have earned guest passes to tour the Expo.  Most of my students are nervous but ready.

I'M nervous but ready.

Preparing for the Business Expo, Part 2: Mock Judging

OMG, this week!!  Mock Judging was Wednesday, and it was ka-raaaaa-zy!  We had to have everything done by Wednesday, and nobody thought they would make it.  We had to have our app judge-ready, the trifold board done, and our pitch presentation memorized.  Then, we set up in Mrs. Christidhis' room and had Ms. G and Mr. Gear and twenty million other people walk through and pretend to be judges.  We all dressed down and wore our white Startup Tech shirts.  There were about a thousand people in the room, and it was hot, and the WiFi was really slow, but we learned so much from practicing.

When we went through Mock Judging, some groups were ready, but then the judges found all kinds of things that needed to be fixed.  Everybody left with a to-do list.  Some groups had apps that didn't make sense, or their pitch was bad, so they had to fix all that.  Our group found out we were really behind when we saw what everyone else had gotten done, so we started working at home to catch up. My partner worked all weekend!  Mrs. Costello kept bothering everybody about their handshake.  We had to make eye contact and have a firm handshake, but it couldn't be too firm.  We had to practice until we got it right.  You can't get a job without a good handshake.

Everybody had little things to fix after Mock Judging, and there's only a week before the real Expo.  I wish we had worked harder earlier in the year so we weren't so far behind.  The judges hated our app and said it didn't solve a problem, so we had to re-do the whole app in a WEEK.

Building Our Apps

The hardest part of building our apps was figuring out what our apps were going to be.  It was easy to have a lot of ideas, but then when we met with Mrs. Costello, we realized we didn't have the time or App Inventor skills to build everything.  Some stuff, we could learn how to do, but other things were either too complicated or we just didn't have time.  Like, we wanted to put a login screen, but that was really complicated, and, when we thought about it, we realized we didn't actually need it. We had to focus on the core feature of our app first and make sure we could build that.

The app had to solve a problem.  It was easy to think about problems, but it was harder to have an idea for an app that could solve that problem and that we could build.  The idea had to be at least a little original.  We were going to put a music player in our app, but we realized that Pandora and iTunes have better music players, so we just linked to those.

Some things were surprisingly hard to build, like a calculator.  We had to look it up online to figure out that the + and - were variables, too.  It took a LOT of if-then statements to get the calculator working, but we realized that that's just how real apps must look when they are coded.  We never knew how much coding went into building something really simple.  That must be why early computers filled a room - they had so many if-then statements.

Preparing for the Business Expo, Part 1

Preparing for the Expo was a real "full court press."  There was so much to do.  We are all so busy with everything else that is going on at the end of the year - Reading Olympics, Model UN, band, choir, science fair, sports, and a thousand other activities.  It's getting hard to manage our time so we can get everything done.  Mrs. Costello posted a calendar to keep us on track.  Some people wasted time at the beginning, so they had to work at home in order to catch up.  Then, there were people with medical and other issues who missed a lot of school, but Mrs. Costello let them "telecommute."  The people who couldn't come to school called their partner and attended the class on speakerphone.  App Inventor is internet-based, and Google lets you collaborate online, so everybody was able to participate even if they couldn't come to school.

There was a lot to do to prepare for the Expo.  We had to code an entire app.  A lot of people had ideas that they didn't know how to code in App Inventor, so we had to look online and figure it out.  Then, we had to come up with a business plan.  We wrote mission statements and figured out our target market and decided how to price our app.  It's really overwhelming, but you feel good when you look back at how much you got done by working a little very day.

Getting ready for the Business Expo

We are starting the Business Expo this week. The hardest part is coming up with an idea.  It has to be our original idea, has to solve a problem, and has to be something we can build in App Inventor.  That's harder than it sounds to come up with!

Once we had some ideas, we started talking to our teammates about what we should do.  This helped us refine our app idea.  Then, we made up customer surveys.  Over Spring Break, we had to ask 20 or more people about what they wanted in an app like ours.  These surveys were really helpful.  Like, I thought I had a good name, but nobody liked it.  They liked another name better, so I changed the name of my app.  We also did some research and found out what real apps do and how they solve the same problems we are trying to solve.  We made some more changes based on what has been proven to work before.

We're about to miss class for 2 weeks because of PSSA testing.  During that time, we will all have appointments to meet with Mrs. Costello to design our logo in Photoshop.  Some people already started.  It's neat to see an idea we just sketch out in pencil come to life on the computer and be better than we ever imagined.  Having a good logo makes it feel more like a real app.

After PSSA, I can't wait to start really coding my app.  This is going to sum up everything we have done in this class, and then we can show it off to judges at the Expo.

Our First App From Scratch!

This week we experienced one of the hardest challenge perhaps since the beginning of this classes.  For the Business Expo, we will be building apps from original ideas, so, to get ready, we had to build a simple app completely from our own ideas.  The only guidance we had was that it had to be something to help teens manage their money better.

It was an amazing experience to build an app based on my idea. With my own idea, it's flexible because I can do what I want and not be locked to a certain idea. It's easier to come up with idea that can improve my app because the app is depend on me and I can apply my idea freely with out any restrictions. 

What hard is that I have to come up with my own wireframe and coding. There are no hints and minimum help and I have to come up with the app design and coding for the app for it to work. It's such a difficult time to do everything from scratch and have to test the app many times, and also focus so I can find and fix mistakes.

Before I started the app it was somewhat overwhelming because I thought it was going to be hard and I had to start everything from scratch with no hint and minimum help from the teacher. But after I finish the app, I realized that it's not as hard as I though it would be.  Going into the expo, I am confident in my self that I could develop an app.

Quiz Me app

The Quiz Me app was a trivia app.  We all picked our own topics and made up questions.  Each question had a different picture, and the app told you if you got the question right or not.  We all had to make our apps different and personalized.  For example, one student made his app different because, if you get a question wrong, Batman dies.  (dun, dun, DUN!)

The Quiz me app was fun to program and great to brainstorm about, and had us really testing what we know about App Inventor. Mrs. Costello told us some of what to do, but not how to do it.  We had to figure things out for ourselves.

The Quiz Me app was awesome because It was challenging but at the same time you were able to fit the pieces and make it work.  My favorite part was the list picker because I was able to figure out how to work it and which blocks to use the blocks for it without having detailed instructions. It felt challenging since the list picker require some high program skill and it takes time to make sure the questions and answers match up so the app gives the right answers.

It was fun to build this app because I learned new things on my own.  I was surprised at how much App Inventor I really knew.