Dr. Natalie Lao and Prerna Ravi lead a workshop on “Generative AI Apps for Responsible Community Engagement” at #HouseOfCode, a national event where winners of the Congressional App Challenge present their apps on Capitol Hill, Washington DC. The workshop is designed to educate students, teachers, and other educational stakeholders on the responsible development and deployment of generative AI technologies through hands-on experience using App Inventor. Through the workshop activities, participants will generate art and text using AI tools and consider their applications in empowering their communities. They will also discuss the importance of creating AI solutions that are ethical, transparent, and beneficial to society while fostering innovation and creativity. Adults will receive guidance on how these activities can be integrated within K-12 settings.

Learn more: https://www.congressionalappchallenge.us/students/houseofcode/

Dr. Natalie Lao, Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, presents at the Girl Geek X ELEVATE conference for mid- to senior-level women in tech. Her talk, titled “Empowering Communities through Mobile App Development,” showcases remarkable apps developed by women and girls around the world using AI and App Inventor to uplift their communities. Attendees learn about various ways to contribute to this empowering movement, including judging for global Appathons, translating resources to bring the platform and curricula to more communities across the world, and making technical contributions to the open-source project.

Learn more: https://girlgeek.io/conferences/elevate-march-2024/

In collaboration with MIT RAISE and Boston PIC, MIT App Inventor hosts students from Boston Public Schools, introducing them to the App Inventor platform and exploring various topics from generative AI to IoT to data science.

App Inventor lead developer Evan Patton joins App Inventor contributors Vishwas Adiga and Diego Barreiro Perez to share how individuals can start contributing to the free and open-source software platform. The team also presents a workshop in the new FOSDEM Junior track, introducing youth aged 7 to 17 to App Inventor through simple apps like HelloPurr and PaintPot.

Learn more: https://fosdem.org/2024/

MIT organizers Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, Dr. Vijay Kumar, Prerna Ravi, and Safinah Ali lead a two-day workshop on AI education at the Center of Excellence in Teacher Education (CETE) at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Day 1: The team presents the MIT Day of AI curriculum to students, teachers, and policy makers from the Indian education system, as well as leading experts from global nonprofits. They engage in roundtable discussions on the future of AI education within the Indian context, including the opportunities and challenges presented in the Global South.

Day 2: Prerna and Safinah lead workshops to introduce AI, demystify generative AI tools, and teach participants how to build AI powered applications with MIT App Inventor. They hold discussions about using AI in the classroom, leveraging AI for creative applications, and the ethical implications of AI usage.

The MIT App Inventor team presents at MIT Generative AI Week. Professor Hal Abelson, founder of the App Inventor project, participates in a panel titled “Moonshots: Big Ideas from MIT.” Evan Patton and David Kim, software developers for MIT App Inventor, demonstrate Aptly and new generative AI components in App Inventor.

Learn more: https://mitgenerativeaiweek.mit.edu/

Dr. Natalie Lao, Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, joins this experts’ round table on the opportunities and risks of generative AI for Asia-Pacific education. This convening is organized by UNESCO Bangkok in partnership with the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization.

Learn more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-convene-experts-round-table-opportunities-and-risks-generative-ai-education-asia-pacific

Robert Parks, curriculum developer at App Inventor, presents “Empowering Learners with a Low-Barrier Mobile Data Science Toolkit” and demos App Inventor’s new components to collect sensor data, graph data, detect anomalies, and make predictions based on linear regression.

Learn more: https://www.constructionismconf.org/

David Kim and Angie Zhou from the App Inventor team lead a workshop on using Generative AI with App Inventor.

Learn more: http://en.kait.jp/news/116.html

Dr. Natalie Lao, Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, presents a draft of the UNESCO AI Competence Framework for teachers and students; Pedro Philippi Araújo, student winner of App of the Season, shares his team’s app XôDengue; and Daeun Yoo, UX Consultant at MIT App Inventor, presents “Digital Art Therapy with GenAI” at a breakout session.

Learn more: https://www.unesco.org/en/weeks/digital-learning

Dr. Natalie Lao, Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, speaks on the Generative AI Panel and represents the Foundation at a booth.

Learn more: https://www.congressionalappchallenge.us/students/houseofcode/

Angie Zhou of the MIT App Inventor team presents on “Learning and Using Image Classifiers by Creating Real Mobile Applications.”

Learn more: https://iated.org/inted/

Robert Parks and Angie Zhou of the MIT App Inventor team lead a week-long workshop on applying App Inventor and machine learning to citizen science.

Learn more: https://indico.ictp.it/event/10139/overview

The MIT App Inventor team presents research on “Learning Affects Trust: Design Recommendations and Concepts for Teaching Children—and Nearly Anyone—about Conversational Agents.”

Learn more: https://eaai-conf.github.io/

Diego Barreiro Perez leads on a workshop on “Building Personalized AI Apps with MIT App Inventor.”

Learn more: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/appinventor/

App Inventor co-hosts the Future Worlds Challenge and Mark Friedman, Board Member of the App Inventor Foundation, speaks on a panel titled “Creative Destruction…What Did the World Gain?”

Learn more: https://sharjahevents.ae/en/event/the-international-government-communication-forum-igcf-2022/