Storing Android Accelerometer Data: App Design
Engineers use computer science knowledge to develop Android devices.Copyright Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_xl.jpg
Students work through an online tutorial on MIT's App Inventor to learn how to create Android applications. Using those skills, they create their own applications and use them to collect data from an Android device accelerometer and store that data to databases. NOTE: Teachers and students must have a working knowledge of basic programming and App Inventor to complete this lesson. This lesson is not an introduction to MIT's App Inventor and is not recommended for use without prior knowledge of App Inventor to produce an end product. This lesson is an application for App Inventor that allows for the storage of persistent data (data that remains in memory even if an app is closed). This required prior knowledge can come from other experiences with the App Inventor. Also, many additional resources are available, such as tutorials from MIT. This lesson could also be used as an enrichment project for students who are self-motivated to learn the App Inventor software.
Together with its associated activity, this lesson is designed to provide students with practice in implementing the engineering design process. Students identify a problem, develop solutions, select and implement the most promising solution, test their solutions and redesign as needed to meet the requirements. The process is driven by the challenge in which students are tasked to create an Android application that performs a specific function. Software engineers employ the design process to create software, such as business software, communication software, compilers, and computer graphics. Ultimately, students plan what the application will do, decide what it looks like, decide how to structure the software, test, and edit to ensure the app works correctly. Students act as software engineers in this hands-on application of the engineering design process.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain how the TinyDB in App Inventor can store data from an Android device.
- Describe and compare each step in the software/system design process with the engineering design process.