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14-year-old’s app is No. 1

January 24, 2011 By Anne Leave a Comment

Robert Nay in Utah has been designing Web sites since the 3rd grade, but now he’s seriously into designing cellphone apps. So seriously that a physics game called “Bubble Ball” which he designed recently moved up to the No. 1 free app in Apple’s App Store, Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning reports. Apparently with some encouragement from his mom, “Nay taught himself programming after checking out a book from his local public library.” As of last week, Bubble Ball had been downloaded more than 2 million times since Nay published it on December 29 (see the video on the Spotlight page for an interview with Robert). Even though programming’s not generally taught in schools, some educators are calling it the new literacy. Drag-and-drop programming tools like Scratch, developed at MIT, are adding to the fun of programming, Spotlight reports. Google has App Inventor for designing apps to run on the Android operating system for cellphones. Here’s Google describing how it’s done: “Creating an App Inventor app begins in your browser, where you design how the app will look. Then, like fitting together puzzle pieces, you set your app’s behavior. All the while, through a live connection between your computer and your phone, your app appears on your phone.” Meanwhile, scientists in the UK are using an Android phone to control a satellite in outerspace, the BBC reports, in a test to see if it’s tough enough and sophisticated enough. Maybe there’s a middle-schooler on the research team!

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Filed Under: mobile, Social Media Tagged With: Android, app programming, App Store, apps, cellphones, iPhone, mobile technology, Robert Nay, smartphones

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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