Fifth Graders Develop Own Apps

Bronxville Elementary School fifth graders have been actively engaged in the world of app development, analyzing apps for their functionality and purpose through App Lab on code.org. Guided by their dedicated technology teacher, Claire Hollocou, the students have been diligently working on creating their own apps and successfully coded a flashlight app and an animal soundboard.

“They learned how to set properties and change those properties with event blocks,” Hollocou said. “In the next class, the students will remix pre-created apps and change the properties and code to make them their own.”

Throughout the immersive experience, the students discussed the reasons why someone would want to create an app and when it is more useful than a website or another alternative program. To bring their apps to life, the fifth graders applied various skills they learned in elementary school, including loops, conditionals and event blocks, to line-based coding, which is a more difficult type of programming language.

“They have done this in Swift Playgrounds, with Root Robots and now with App Lab,” Hollocou said. “In App Lab, they are able to toggle between block and line-based code, so it allows students to explore this new program with some built-in support.”

At the end of the unit, the students will have the ability to develop their own simple apps. They will put their skills to the test in the Be The Change project, where they will be tasked with creating another app aimed at educating others or sparking interest in a particular topic.