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Unit 2

Introduction to Mobile Apps & Pair Programming

2.1 Unit Overview

2.2 I Have a Dream Tutorial

2.3 The Internet & The Cloud

2.4 I Have a Dream Part 2

2.5 Mobile Apps & Devices

2.6 Algorithm Basics

2.7 I Have a Dream Projects

2.8 Abstraction

2.9 Binary Numbers

2.10 Hardware Abstractions: Logic Gates

2.11 The Digitial Explosion

2.12 Wrap Up


Introduction to Mobile Apps & Pair Programming

Mobile devices -- smart phones and tablets -- are general purpose computers. They have all the computing capabilities as desktop and laptop computers, plus they are mobile.

This lesson focuses on the basic hardware and software that work together to enable our mobile devices to run the amazing apps that we'll be building. As new programmers it's important that we understand how the programs we write are interpreted and processed by the computer.


In your portfolio, create a new page named Mobile Apps and Mobile Devices (If you are using the Mobile CSP Student portfolio template, this page has already been created for you) and answer the following questions:

  1. Give an example of a special purpose computer that you are familiar with and briefly describe its hardware and its software.
  2. Explain in your own words the difference between running your app by "Connecting to the Companion" and running your app by "Packaging" it.
  3. As we learned in this lesson, a byte is about the same amount of memory as a character, such as the letter 't'. There are approximately 7 million characters in all of the Harry Potter novels combined.
    • How many bytes of memory would all of the Harry Potter novels take up?
    • How many copies of the Harry Potter novels would fit on a 7 Gigabyte flash drive? (Remember 1 Gigabyte is 1 billion bytes.)