The aim of this thesis is to identify AppInventor's existing capabilities and
limitations with respect to game development, and to implement ideas (both
pedagogical and technological in nature) that will improve the diversity,
complexity, aesthetic appeal, and performance of games that can be built using
AppInventor. The author of this thesis believes that if AppInventor's game
development capabilities can be augmented, the adoption rate of the tool and its
popularity amongst school students will be impacted very positively.
In this thesis, the author describes his personal experiences teaching
AppInventor game development in India and USA, as well as the limitations (in
teaching methodology and in AppInventor's feature set) that he identified
through this experience. The author's primary contributions are the development
of a hands-on curriculum for a 40-hour AppInventor Game Development course,
and the implementation of several new features and components for
AppInventor. The author will be traveling to China and India in Summer 2012
to test to what extent his creative curriculum and novel AppInventor
modifications facilitate the development of games using AppInventor.