[Jeremy Scott]

21/09/2012 at 4:55 pm

I’ve been advised that some schools in  Glasgow are having difficulty getting App Inventor to work in their schools and therefore use the RSE/BCS I Love My Smartphone mobile app development materials. I’ve not, however, been told what the problem is and wondered if I might be able to help? Or is it a case of not being able to get the software installed on machines by external IT support providers?

 

Regards,

Jeremy Scott

[DCullen]

21/09/2012 at 9:21 pm

We too have a problem in Argyll and Bute getting App Inventor to work. We can log in and load the blocks editor. However the Blocks editor gets stuck and says “Loading initial project …”    and never gets any further than that.

The troubleshooting section of the app inventor website says of this problem….

“This probably means that there is a communication problem between the browser and the Blocks Editor, and does not reflect issues with the phone. One way to verify  this is to drag a new component onto the designer and see if a drawer for that   component appears in the Blocks Editor. If not, it’s a browser communication    problem. This problem is commonly caused by firewalls. If your computer is running  a firewall, turn it off. This issue arises with Firefox if you are using the                “noscript Application Boundaries Enforcer extension”(ABE)      (http://noscript.net/abe/). You should turn the extension off: Open the options for   noscript, go under the Advanced tag and uncheck the “Enable ABE” box.
You cant drag new components onto the designer. It’ll say you haven’t loaded a project. So it’s a browser communication problem.

[Lesley Fisher]

22/09/2012 at 6:22 am

We are having a problem in Dumbarton Academy, West Dunbartonshire with App Inventor.  We can log in, see project created at home, and open the blocks editor.  The problem is  when we try to open the emulator the initial screen displays with the warning it could take some time, then the window for the phone appears for a short time then disappears.  Also the connection at times is slow or we get server not available.  The really strange thing is we got it working perfectly on one computer then never again, tried a second computer and it was fine first time but never again. Technician thinks it is possibly a proxy server setting and maybe a connection is timing out.

[Jeremy Scott]

24/09/2012 at 8:29 am

That sounds possible re the proxy issue; however, note that the emulator needs modify permissions on two folders:

• C:.appinventor
• C:Program FilesAppInventor

so you may have to allow this for domain users.

 

Lastly, are you using NetOp Vision software for network screen sharing? We found it clashed with App Inventor (in fact Vision’s pretty disruptive overall) and had to unregister glspost from the machines.

 

I’d strongly recommend persevering, as App Inventor is certainly worth it. The level of engagement from pupils really is through the roof (especially when they see their apps working on a handset).

 

Regards,

Jeremy

[Lesley Fisher]

24/09/2012 at 3:34 pm

Thanks Jeremy, I will pass information to technician.  I have funds to purchase handsets, can you advise on make and model.  Also if I need to get any drivers installed.  Thanks

[tmcguire]

25/09/2012 at 3:19 pm

Hi Jeremy , At the end of May Glasgow said they had decided to delay considering deploying App Inverntor. 

I believe discussions took place between eduaction and Access ( New arms length IT support organisation) and two reasons were given for delay:-

• It’s a Beta version and therefor may well be subject to design modifications and possibly de-bugging  in the near future.
• Security and data protection issues with conecting android devices, data storage outside EU and creating Google accounts.

We’re also (over)due a major hardware refresh this session so I don’t anticipate it progressing any time soon.

[Mrs Janet McDonald]

26/09/2012 at 9:53 am

Hi Jeremy

We’re looking for some help with the tasks themselves(!), I hope it’s OK to ask about that here too…

 

We’re intending to use the I Love My Smartphone materials with S3 later this year.  Having circumnavigated (we hope) all the issues with getting it running on the school network, staff have been working through the tasks.  We’ve only got as far as Virtual Pet and we’ve already got stuck with a few things!

– should the vibrate and accelerometer features work on the emulator; or will these only work on a real phone?

– is there any way to upload an app (such as Virtual Pet 3) so that pupils can view it in the emulator without having to create it themselves first?

 

Thanks!

Janet

[Mrs Janet McDonald]

01/10/2012 at 8:57 am

Hi Jeremy

We’ve solved some of our problems:

– we googled and found that the acceleromer doesn’t work with the emulator… we’re rather assuming from that that the vibrate feature will be in the same boat.

– we read your teachers guide properly (which is the first thing you would tell the kids to do…!) and found out how to download and upload apps… sorry about that!

 

Like Lesley Fisher, we’d also be interested in any advice you could give in relation to phone brands – I see in the teachers guide that you say phones work better than tablets, but are there any particular brands of phones (that you’re aware of) that work better (or worse!). 

Thanks

Janet

[Peter W Donaldson]

02/10/2012 at 8:01 am

There is a google docs spreadsheet with a list of phones and tablets and notes about any issues they have which you can find here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgIdRCXI87uXdEZxR0ppRGZkNENpbDZuQnY3a0wyenc#gid=0

 

If you want new phones then a budget phone like the Huewei G500 is around £100 and seems to have the most positive reviews at the moment although I’m not sure how easy it is to install the drivers on the PC. At the moment we’re planning on buying 2nd hand phones, due to cost, and going for something like the HTC Desire S.