Integrated Learning: Android Development and Learning Language – Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese

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Want to make an android application? Want to learn a language at the same time? Don’t know how to code? No Problem. You can develop Android applications, learn the basics of coding, and develop final products, WHILE LEARNING YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE. Read more below to find out how.

I am using the MIT App Inventor which you can get access to here: http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/, it comes with a point and click app designer, as well as a point and click coding interface and many video tutorials geared towards absolute beginners. The Idea being that coding should be accessible to everyone, MIT has crafted an amazing tool that allows you to develop simple mobile applications that you can publish to the android store.

So how am I using this to learn language?

I am building an application that displays a random verse of scripture in English and Japanese with a vocabulary list that displays the kanji. You can see the beginnings of it in the screenshot above.

If you have ever seen the last lecture by the late carnegie mellon professor Randy Pausch, he speaks about “headfake” learning, the idea being that by taking the focus off of learning and participating in activities where the concepts of what you want to learn are used, you are able to learn much more efficiently.

I have noticed that using app inventor is so fun that I do not mind studying the vocabulary in order to build the application. It’s a twofer!

Setup is very simple, you just need to download a 99mb tool kit if you want to run an android emulator for the program that you are building and everything else is cloud based. You retain rights for everything that you develop so you can publish the application later to the google play store and monetize it!

It’s a win win win.