Mobile App Design & Coding

How to Access Projects

Your Ninja designed and coded real Android-style apps in MIT App Inventor this week. Every Ninja's apps are published to our class Padlet so you can play and explore at home in three steps:

Open the Padlet board for your ninja's week. Every Ninja in the class has a tile with their published apps.
Jul 20 PM Padlet →
Find your ninja's tile and click the share link. The link opens your ninja's app in MIT App Inventor (free, runs in any browser, no install).
Play, edit, or load on a phone. Test the app in App Inventor's built-in emulator (no phone required), or use the MIT AI2 Companion mobile app to load it on your phone. From here your Ninja can keep building, customizing, and designing new screens.

What We Covered This Week

Throughout the camp, Ninjas designed and coded seven real Android-style apps using MIT App Inventor — the same platform schools and universities use to teach mobile development — and finished with an App Jam capstone of their own design. Click any topic to expand.

App Inventor Basics: Ninja Doodle & Ball Bounce

Played App Detective Roundtable — warmed up by guessing real apps from yes/no questions, getting Ninjas thinking about what apps actually do
Toured MIT App Inventor — projects, the Viewer, the Palette (Buttons, TextBoxes, Canvases), the Properties panel, and the Blocks editor
Met the emulator — the virtual phone for testing apps with no real device needed
Built Ninja Doodle — a drawing app where touching the canvas paints a line
Built Ball Bounce — a Ball component that bounces off edges with the EdgeReached event, controlled by the Flung gesture

Randomization & Functions: Fortune Teller & Ninja Masher

Played Mystery Predictions ("Magic Hat") — warmed up the day with real-world examples of randomization (Among Us role assignment, Subway Surfers power-ups, Minecraft mob spawning)
Built the Ninja Fortune Teller — tap a button, app picks a random response from a list (random number generator, lists, button events)
Built Ninja Masher — learned functions (procedures) and why they matter (cleaner code, easier to fix)
Customized both apps with personal images, sounds, and prediction text

Game Mechanics: Wizard Defender & Clicker Frenzy

Talked about keeping score — why games track score and how it changes player behavior
Built Wizard Defender — player launches projectiles at an enemy using ImageSprite, projectile movement, sprite overlap detection, and score
Built Clicker Frenzy — tap-to-score game with a counter, upgrade mechanics, and increasing challenge
Customized sprites, sounds, and difficulty tuning on both apps

Advanced Apps: Mini-Golf & Ninja Pathfinder

Built Mini-Golf — a physics-based game with a ball, paddles or obstacles, and scoring
Built Ninja Pathfinder — a navigation/maze-style app with custom logic
Customized both apps before the capstone day, layering on personal touches

App Jam Capstone & Camp Celebration

Took on the App Jam — designed and built an app of their own, following the full pro workflow: brainstorm → wireframe → pseudocode → code → peer review → polish → showcase
Learned wireframing on paper — sketched the app's screens before touching any code
Wrote pseudocode in plain English — real software practice ("plan the logic before writing any code")
Swapped apps for a peer review round, then implemented the feedback
Presented their capstone app at the Camp Celebration — parents walked around the dojo and played every ninja's app live

What's Next?

Camp week is over, but the coding doesn't have to stop. Join us for our next FREE workshop on August 22 — 90 minutes of hands-on coding and AI.

GRADES 2-8

One-Time
90 min

Try coding and AI through beginner-friendly, hands-on projects. Workshops are a great way for kids to explore STEM and see what Code Ninjas is all about.

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Mobile App Design & Coding

How to Access Projects

What We Covered This Week

What's Next?

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