App Inventor and studio-based learning were a synergistic combination: they are
valuable independently, but together they provide for a motivating, fun, and rigorous
introduction to computer science through smart phone application development. The
students were further motivated by the public nature of the course: we were partnered
with Google-a big name even for non-CS majors!-and the students showed their work to
each other, in a public showcase, and for the world on a course Web site.