Title: The Cat’s Meow

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 08 September 2015 07:06:20 +01:00 or Tue, 08 September 2015 07:06:20 +01:00

Summary: Gail Ollis reports from the App-a-thon World Record attempt.

Body: 

In attempt to set a new world record for the largest number of people learning to write an Android application at the same time.

“Buzzing! I have had an absolute blast today helping adults & children alike write their first apps.” This was the Facebook status I posted one Saturday evening in June after having as much fun as I’ve ever had helping people to program.

The event

That day I was one of the team at Bournemouth University helping out with the BCS App-a-thon Guinness World Records Challenge [1], an event organised nationally by BCSWomen [2] with the voluntary support of organisations around the country. At 10:30 on Saturday, 13th June, I blew the timekeeper’s whistle in a computer laboratory in Bournemouth. Something similar happened at 29 other locations (though I suspect mine was the only duck-design whistle) as 1093 interested adults and children in England, Scotland and Wales all started a world record attempt.

We had one hour to teach them all to write an Android app. This followed a common pattern across all the venues: people learning how to build a simple program that would play a meow sound when tapping on the image of a cat, and then extending it to ‘purr’ by vibrating. Because not all tablets can vibrate, smartphone owners tended to have more contented cats.

By the end of the hour, everyone had a working cat program on their device. Listen to the cat chorus from Aberystwyth University [3] and you’ll have a good idea of how our lab sounded. Many people had moved on to adding extra animals, leading to some interesting bugs such as chickens responding with owl hoots. When time was called at 11:30 (the duck whistle again) the record attempt was complete, but the learners were clearly still having fun. Most took up the invitation to stay on and play some more; we provided printouts of some tutorials [6] to help give them ideas. Until mid afternoon, when we sent the last of them home, the lab continued in the same busy, productive and cheerful buzz as people tried out whichever idea appealed to them.

The tech

There were temporary accounts ready for all 41 of the Bournemouth learners on the lab computers and wifi network. This worked smoothly apart from the one phone that had evidently been deprived of a wifi connection for so long that for quite some time it was too busy getting its fix of updates to respond to anything else. Eventually it got its fill and was ready to download App Inventor Companion, an app which provides the easiest way to test the programs its owner would be writing.

AI Companion allows testing in real time and on the actual Android device, provided that the device is on the same network as the computer where the program is written. This is the recommended method, but does depend on every programmer having their own device. If they don’t, another option is to use the emulator, but in preparing for the event we had not found this very easy or reliable. In any case it’s just not the same as seeing, touching and feeling the fruits of your programming on an actual tablet or smartphone. The third testing option is to download to the device with a USB cable, which we didn’t need because our network arrangements allowed us to stick with the preferred wifi method. Apart from a couple of minor hiccups, which went away upon restarting the AI Companion app, this worked very well.

The programs were written using a web-based tool, MIT App Inventor 2 [4]. For me, a programmer in text since 1982, trying to program with visual blocks was by far the hardest part of the whole thing. This may explain why my own very first app, a speech-to-text program written while preparing for the Appathon, said something that was Not Suitable For Work. Once I got used to filling in the blanks in the drag-and-drop blocks and clicking the blocks together it was easy to use but I’m not sure I will ever adjust to the fact that chunks of program logic lay scattered across a page. Even now I’ve found out how to collapse blocks I’d still be happier to have my code marshalled into neatly-labelled files; I’ve yet to find any way to impose meaningful order.

Several of the children had used Scratch [5] at school and found App Inventor similar and pretty easy to use. The adults got on fine with it too. The most subtle problem was with blocks that looked connected but hadn’t properly clicked together. There’s an audible ‘click’, but it’s not always audible in a busy lab and the visual cue is rather subtle too, so for some situations the tool could benefit from giving more noticeable feedback as components link up.

When they had created a program in App Inventor, learners were able to connect it to the AI Companion app installed on their phone or tablet just by scanning a QR code. Thereafter AI Companion (mostly) stayed in sync with any changes so that they could seamlessly test on their Android device as they went along. Once they had something they wanted to install permanently or share with others we showed them how to build it in App Inventor. With a couple of simple clicks the program is ready to install via another QR code or to save as a file. The disappointment that it would cost money to put an app in the Google Play store instantly evaporated when they learned that there were other ways to install and share it. The programming projects in App Inventor remain available for them to experiment with another day, linked to their Google account.

The outcome

The tutorials [6] helped people to learn to control the effect of a whole range of familiar actions: flicking a pirate ship towards gold coins to collect them; shaking a magic 8-ball to make it respond to questions with a random pick from answers you wrote yourself; hitting the creatures that pop up in a classic whack-a-mole style game where you decided to make it whack-a-wabbit instead. The joy of making things happen was evident even when people followed a tutorial verbatim, but still more so when they gained the confidence to explore, tweak and customise and unleashed their creativity with a twinkle in their eye.

Our learners in Bournemouth – children, adults and whole families – all got stuck in. Adults at other locations included a white haired grandma in Huddersfield, who was thrilled to get an owl to hoot on her phone. Children in our lab and no doubt elsewhere were showing and sharing with others with friendly ease. It was a memorable atmosphere that combined focus and excitement into a very productive buzz. The moments that moved me most, though, were the ones where parents of the current generation of schoolchildren discovered that they could do it too – the wonder in the voice of the mother who announced “I’ve just written my first program, in my forties!”

The point

So did we manage to set a record? We had the numbers – we needed over a thousand – so it’s possible. At the time of writing Guinness World Records are in the process of checking the evidence: statements from all the independent witnesses and stewards about what they saw, and photos and videos taken on the day.

But even if we don’t get the record, we achieved something more valuable. The sessions were led by women, with a team of women and men helping out. All those children and all those parents had the chance to see that women can and do ‘do IT’, and to discover that it can be fun, and that they could do it too.

That was the goal, and the inclusive approach appeals to me. According to the App-a-thon press release women represent just 16% of IT professionals. I have no figure for the percentage I’d like it to be, simply be the number who would choose to do it if every child were given sufficient opportunity to find out if it appeals to them and to consider it as a realistic career option. It would be rash to assume that now having computing on the school curriculum can achieve this; being a mainstream subject rather than just a club activity may help, but there are subjects of much longer standing that are still perceived as “boys’ subjects” and “girls’ subjects”.

I can’t help feeling that activities targeted specifically at girls risk reinforcing this stereotype; organising something for girls rather than kids in general flags girls as ‘special’ in computing. I worry that at the same time as telling them that girls CAN do computing, it carries the implicit message that nonetheless right now girls, on the whole, DON’T.

Singling out role models runs a similar risk; highlighting exceptional women doesn’t necessarily lead others to think they could join them on the pedestal. Role projects, however, are great. I don’t know the job title of anyone I saw on the broadcasts from the control room of the Philae lander, but my cheers at the news it had landed were even louder for seeing a woman there, front and centre just doing her job without individual fanfare on an inspirational technical project. Teaching people to make their phones meow doesn’t compare! But similarly, we were just there, doing the stuff we know how to do. Normal. No big deal. But visible.

References

[1] http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/54172

[2] http://www.bcs.org/category/8630

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdZPsRYHJ7o

[4] http://appinventor.mit.edu/

[5] https://scratch.mit.edu/

[6] http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/tutorials.html

This is a personal account of the event. Opinions are my own and not the views of Bournemouth University or BCSWomen.

Notes: 

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