A Meaningful App-Building Project

Making meaning. That happens when students create their own apps that solve a meaningful problem. They make their own meaning because they create apps that wouldn’t exist without their invention and creation.

With different talents, interests, abilities, and interaction styles, students need authentic projects to allow them to develop these unique abilities under the guidance of an expert teacher, even as they are learning common standards.

Powerful projects can happen at any time of the school year, but the best ones require careful planning. Our most powerful project from last school year was the collaborative app-building that my ninth-grade students completed at the end of the year.

In order to do this work with your students, you should be able to use a web browser–based app-building tool like Figma or MAD-Learn, use a simple graphics program like Canva or PhotoShop Express, and have up to six weeks for the app-building project.

PREP WORK: Understanding Collective Intelligence

In some past projects, I noticed that teams were less diverse than optimal. Additionally, I want my students not only to use their personal intelligence and creativity but also to know how to work as a team to promote that team’s collective intelligence.

This year, I created a two-day lesson on “collective intelligence” based on knowledge from the book Hidden Potential, by Adam Grant. They learn about the “Golden 13”—the first-ever group of Black men commissioned as Navy officers. We also discuss the collective intelligence exhibited in the leaders who rescued the trapped Chilean miners in 2010.

We talk about the following:

• The importance of prosocial behaviors
• Actively including everyone in conversation
• The positive benefits of diversity on teams

Step 1: Brainstorming and Ideation

First, before students start creating, they must spend sufficient time ideating. The more time students spend brainstorming, ideating, and working through the idea behind the app, the better the app will be in the end.

As they discuss their ideas, I listen in and ask strategic questions to help them think about their audience, their unique value proposition, and some content ideas.

Sometimes, students may use artificial intelligence (AI) to help them “brainstorm.” However, I caution them that AI is not great at coming up with new ideas, but it will often parrot the ideas that others have had previously.

For this reason, I encourage students to discuss without using AI until they start working on the name of their app. AI is useful for app-naming ideas that include alliteration, rhyming, or even an acronym. (Note: I do not like the term thought partner, often used with AI. AI is a tool. I believe that as educators we should not anthropomorphize these tools in our classrooms.)

As part of the app ideation process, I require the class to come up with 20 to 30 app ideas. We also use brain writing techniques. Then, with a comprehensive list of potential app ideas, students list their top three choices and begin forming teams.

Step 2: Team Formation and Pitch

As students begin choosing ideas, they self-create teams of four to five students. With the collective intelligence lessons, the teams are more diverse and inclusive than ever.

Once the teams have been created, they can begin the pitch process. In this process, students create a pitch deck including the following:

• The app idea
• The target audience for the app
• The proposed name of the app
• A site map, or a list of the main screens and what will link to each other
• How this is different from other apps already out there
• How this app uniquely uses their knowledge as teenagers to differentiate from other apps

Then, when students pitch to me, they receive either a green light, a yellow light, or a red light.

Red light means that production stops. I have never had to red-light a project at this point, although I have had students red-light their own projects when they couldn’t get a vision for their app.

A yellow light means changes must happen before the app can go into production. For example, their site map doesn’t adequately represent what they want to do in the app.

A green light means it’s ready to go into production, and they can begin building.

As a teacher who works hard to produce gold-standard project-based learning in my classroom, this iterative work as students design and pitch their product is extremely important as students add their own opinions and grapple with getting their apps approved.

Step 3: Team Responsibilities and App-Building Kickoff

Once it’s gone into production, the fun begins. Students will create their logo, their color scheme, and the theme for their app pages; finalize the site map; and start building their app.

Roles and responsibilities. Each team needs graphic designers, writers, and programmers. Each team has to have a project manager, an assistant project manager, and a lead production manager/editor who is responsible for ensuring that every page is not only created but also alpha and beta tested. Additionally, for the 30-second video commercial needed for the “shark tank” portion of the project, they may have a “videographer” on the team.

Preparing students to succeed. When each group kicks off, I create a list of optional training courses that I can provide as their teacher. Everyone is trained on the app-building platform, as I require every student to create a minimum of three pages in their app. Everyone is also trained on the appropriate use of AI in the app-building process.

Using AI in graphic design. Students are allowed to use AI to create their app’s logo. However, students must verify that their AI-created logo is different from other logos and that they haven’t inadvertently allowed AI to violate copyrighted work by dragging their logo image into Google image search. They can look at the other images that come up, and we discuss how closely they match, if at all. In my experience, I have had AI create unique logos based on the unique input of my students.

Using AI in content creation. Students are accountable for everything that’s created or goes into their app. So, they quickly learn that they must supervise, verify, and find original source material.

All original sources and AI prompts with answers must be cited on each app page where it’s used.

Step 4: App Building and Testing

Additionally, I like to use tools that allow live updates for their apps. So, as students build their apps in either MAD-Learn or Figma, those updates go instantly to their phones, and they can see the changes they have made.

Also, I stress the importance of testing their apps on various screen sizes. Then, after students have created a working mock-up, we move into testing and iteration. In this process, students type the name of each page into a spreadsheet, along with the name of who was working on each page.

For alpha testing, students sign up for pages on their teams and provide feedback in Google Sheets, including any issues they find that need to be fixed on those pages.

Then, we move into the beta testing stage, where students need to get other students and adults to test their pages on various platforms.

Using AI in testing apps. Using AI for formative feedback is completely optional. If you are able to give the feedback yourself, that’s best, but if you want to involve AI, I recommend creating a tool to provide the correct type of feedback that doesn’t do the work for students.

After the alpha and beta testing, my students also will use a custom GPT I created that was built atop ChatGPT and provides feedback on the graphic design and other elements of their pages. I open the ChatGPT app on my phone and load the custom GPT chatbot I have made. Then, students use my phone so that I’m able to fully monitor all of their interactions with AI. And they can take a picture of their app pages to receive feedback on both the content and the basic graphic design of the pages.

Students must draft everything, but they may use AI for formative feedback and to improve their writing by adding transitions, removing sticky sentences, and dealing with other flow issues to make the app more readable by the general public.

Using AI in the formative feedback process tends to work well. AI is pretty good at identifying issues with contrast, as well as gaps in information that they may have. Any time students use AI, they include links to the AI chats in their app, and they have to include original links as hyperlinks. This lets me monitor their work and ensure that it’s predominantly student-created.

Step 5: Shark Tank

After this process, we are ready for the “shark tank.” Several days before, I email the judges with links to test the apps that the students have created. On the day of the event, parents are invited, and students present for four to six minutes to convince the judges of the merits of their app.

Judges use a scoring rubric and are encouraged to ask questions for each team to learn the skills of thinking on their feet. The judges consult privately and return to present to the teams their feedback and their selection of the winner.

Step 6: Celebration and Reflection

So much is learned in a project such as this, and when we are done, students need to celebrate. The day after the shark tank, we have a fun time of celebration, and we discuss what we have learned, what we would do differently, and what I, as the teacher, need to do next time with future students.

Years later, students come back as adults and thank me for the work they did building apps, pitching, working on teams, and presenting in a shark tank–style experience. They say it helped them learn not only how to think with a group but also how to cooperate, collaborate, and communicate.