App Inventor — a Google cast-out that is now maintained by MIT — is a graphical tool that unlocks the power of an Android handset to those with the most basic of programming understanding.

The MIT App Inventor program is an open source web platform for making apps that is backed by an MIT partnership with Google, and a decade of research. Professor Hal Abelson heads the team and has ...

Here is where the real innovation of MIT App Inventor shines through because it makes programming the application very visual. Each function is represented by a colorful jigsaw puzzle-like block.