Meet the MIT App Inventor Training Corps

Mar 19, 2013 josh's Blog


MIT App Inventor Training Corps @ the MIT Media Lab
Back Row, left to right: Arta Szathmary, Kelly Powers, Shaileen Pokress, Kristin Violette, Barbara Ericson; Front Row: Krishnendu Roy, Josh Sheldon, Mark Sherman, William Smith

This past Friday and Saturday, at the MIT Media Lab, I had the honor of welcoming seven educators and App Inventor experts from around the country to the inaugural working group meeting of the MIT App Inventor Training Corps. Joined by other representatives from the MIT App Inventor team and Phil Puthumana of the Verizon Foundation, we gathered to prepare to train the ten Best in Nation winning teams who competed in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. These winning teams, announced on Monday afternoon, were selected through a rigorous judging process from a pool of more than 470 submitted concepts. Each winning team has been matched with an MIT App Inventor Training Corps member, who will provide online and in person support as the teams use App Inventor as a tool to refine and build the apps they proposed in their Challenge proposals. We're very fortunate to have such experts as part of this initial group of trainers, and look forward to witnessing the work they do in concert with the winners of the Verizon Innovative App Challenge. We're also fortunate to be working with an amazing team from the Verizon Foundation. We thank the Verizon Foundation for their generous gift to the Center for Mobile Learning at MIT that turned the Training Corps project from a dream into a reality!