Why don’t you get really wild:
Take the companion and take everything out that is not needed and so have a small app
that is capable of installing apk’s.
I bet that is possible. I bet someone is going to build it in such a way that you can load any apk
on your phone and install it that way. That would tremendously help sideloading stores
like fdroid etc.
Nevertheless I am still expanding and writing documentation for my own app inventor clone that builds plain vanilla javascript and the created stand alone apps run on every platform (Linux, Windows, IOS, Android) automatically. Runs locally on and offline. no servers and overhead needed.
No can do! In order to install an APK, an app requires a special permission. Google will not let you put an app in the Play Store with that permission except under exceptional circumstances.
And even with that permission, devices treat it as sideloading, which is going to become harder to do (see other threads).
How about alongside the AI2 Companion App, we add a complement; the AI2 Builder App?
My vision is a tool that lets you build apps directly on your Android/iOS device-more convenient; you just have to launch the app and build (given you have an account).
It will look and function closely to the original AI2 Main Site
(https://ai2a.appinventor.mit.edu).
I think that is unlikely. MIT's motto is "mens et manus"--Latin for mind and hand. Much of our education philosophy revolves around this, that one not only thinks deeply about a problem but then acts to build solutions. Encouraging AI slop would not be in line with this philosophy. Of course, we are interested in research as to how the use of AI tools does affect people's perceptions of their capabilities and how they affect computational action in their communities. Whatever we eventually release in this space, we will want to ensure that it will have positive outcomes.
