Google dumps App Inventor

Google is dumping App Inventor, releasing the source code and looking for “opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor.”  App Inventor was a visual programming language for building Android apps.  Slashdot calls it Google pulling the plug on “programming for the masses.”  It may have been triggered by a damning review in the NYTimes where David Pogue was unable to get through even the tutorials in a day’s worth of effort.  I would think that this would call for renewed effort to improve the product, if Google really did want to support app programming by everyone.

With the winding down of Google Labs, Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code. Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform.

As a result of these changes App Inventor will be available through the end of the year but users should expect the current App Inventor URL, to change sometime in the next 90 days. Please subscribe to the App Inventor Announcement forum for future updates.

via App Inventor for Android – Google Labs.

4 Out of 5 in Community College Want to Transfer, Report Says – NYTimes.com

Making transfer easier from community colleges is a big focus of the CAITE broadening participation in computing alliance. Community colleges tend to be much more diverse. Make it easier for those students (who are already interested in College) to get into your departments, and you have a strategy for improving diversity in your department. This new report says that lots of community college students want to do exactly that. What’s the problem then? Letting community college students know what classes to take to make the transfer easier, and making sure that departments in colleges, universities, and community colleges keep talking about changes to their curricula so that the mapping is up-to-date.

As many as four out of five community college students in the United States want to transfer to a four-year institution so they can obtain a bachelor’s degree, according to a report released Thursday by the College Board.

The report, on the challenges facing students who transfer from two-year public colleges to four-year institutions, also found that two of every five undergraduates in the United States is enrolled in a community college.

The report, “Improving Student Transfer From Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions,” draws on interviews with 21 administrators from 12 universities, including Georgetown and the University of Southern California.

The popularity of community colleges can be attributed to a number of factors, including proximity to home and rising tuition at four-year institutions. The average tuition at a public community college is 36 percent of that at a public four-year university, according to the report.

via 4 Out of 5 in Community College Want to Transfer, Report Says – NYTimes.com.