Lesson Overview

In this unit, students will create musical apps as a continuation of the MyPiano app created in the previous unit. They are encouraged to design their own musical apps using sound effects and instrument recordings, with provided images and matching music/sound recordings. They may also add their own images and sounds for an added challenge. This unit reinforces previously learned Computational Thinking concepts, such as events, parallelism, and repetition. Students will reuse and remix code from the MyPiano app and practice being incremental and iterative, as well as testing and debugging.

Learning Objectives

• After completing this unit, students will be able to:
  1. Utilize Layout components to organize the user interface of an app.
  2. Use events, parallelism, and naming in their app.
  3. Reuse and remix code.
  4. Be iterative and incremental in developing their app.
  5. Test and debug to make a working app.

Lesson Plan

Learning Prerequisite

Students should complete two App Inventor units, "Hello It's Me" and "My Piano” App, before starting this unit. They should also be familiar with button events and playing sounds.

Activity

🔽 Introduction of the project

• You will create your own Music Maker app that includes various instruments and beat sound files. This app will build upon your work with the MyPiano app and add extended and varied sound files.
• Here's a quick demo of what the completed app will look like.(YouTube link:Music Maker ,00:35~01:10).

🔽 Designing the App

• To get started, follow steps below. (Or refer to the Youtube link above.) Download the “MusicMaker_template.aia file” provided above.

• When you import the template, your designer will have the appearance shown below. You will be provided with some starter layouts that you can view, modify, or delete. All image and sound files can be found under the Media section.

• Using HorizontalArrangement and VerticalArrangement components.

• Click Screen1 and go to the properties, scroll down, and set the Screen Orientation to be landscape.