Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Building Apps with Students Using MAD-learn

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Can elementary students really build their own apps? I've been building apps with my students for years — I even led a global collaborative app project back in 2017 with classrooms around the world, and blogged about it on Edutopia. This is a fantastic app building tool for students. This year, we even vibe coded, as there's a place to put code into it, and created some fantastic apps.

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Key Takeaways for Teachers from Erin Keith and Edward Courtney

  • Students move from consumers to creators. When kids build their own apps, they stop just using technology and start making it — and that shift changes how they see themselves as learners.
  • The soft skills are the real curriculum. Erin's students build persistence, collaboration, and problem-solving — the very skills the future will ask of them — while they think they're “just” building an app.
  • Apps become acts of service. Edward's students built apps to save their school, protect sea turtles, and support their beach community; Erin's built “Meet the Teacher” apps to welcome next year's class. The work turns outward toward helping others.
  • Introduce AI with care and a plan. Both teachers frame AI as a tool — not a person — and teach it with guardrails, echoing Dr. Nancy Frey's line that “it's okay to have a ban as long as you have a plan.”

Try This Tomorrow

Ask students to name one real problem in your school or community, then sketch a three-screen app on paper that helps solve it: a home screen, an information screen, and a “take action” screen. No devices required — you're teaching the design process before anyone writes a line of code.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About Erin Keith (Bio as Submitted)

I am the Computer Science Teacher and Technology Specialist at Kedron Elementary School in Fayette County, Georgia. Thirteen years of teaching experience has reinforced my passion for education and also ignited my interest in technology. As the Computer Science Teacher, I teach digital citizenship, Google applied skills, 3D modeling and printing, mobile app development, robotics, graphic design, video production, and block coding to kindergarten through fifth grade students. I had the honor of receiving the 2025 Computational Thinking award, presented by Dr. Richard Woods and the Georgia Department of Education. As the Technology Specialist, I maintain all of the devices in the building, I lead technology based school improvement initiatives, and I manage mass communications for Kedron. Prior to working at Kedron, I was a high school English teacher. As an English teacher, I served in technology focused leadership roles by serving on the Learning Management System Evaluation Committee, the 1:1 Technology Rollout Committee, the Personalized Learning Committee, the Virtual Teacher Exemplar Committee, and as a virtual course designer and a virtual course teacher. Through these experiences I have gained expertise in both leadership and instructional technology. Most importantly, I have enjoyed a plethora of opportunities to experience, promote, and advocate for the teaching and learning of technology skills.

About Edward Courtney (Bio as Sumitted)

Mr. Edward Courtney is a certified elementary & special education classroom teacher and has worked in the field for 8 years. He has received recognition and several local and regional accolades for technology innovation in the classroom. He has a MS in Teaching from Fordham University and a BS in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In addition to his professional degrees, he is also certified in school building and district leadership. Mr. Courtney currently works for Long Beach Public Schools located in Long Beach, NY at East Elementary School as a K-5 WINGS teacher. WINGS, or What I Need to Grow as a Student, provides students with opportunities for differentiation and personalized learning paths. Mr. Courtney believes that we are all lifelong learners and strives to create meaningful and collaborative learning environments.

Connect with Edward on X: @MrCourtneyNY.

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

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Vicki Davis: Happy Tech Tool Tuesday. Today we're talking about MAD-learn, one of my favorite tools for creating apps with students. Let's learn.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today's sponsor is MAD-learn, my favorite app development tool for students. Stick around at the end of today's show to hear more, or visit coolcatteacher.com/madlearn.

Vicki Davis: Can you build apps with students? We have with us today two elementary teachers, Erin Keith and Mr. Edward Courtney. As we talk about building apps with kids, we all use something called MAD-learn. I use it in my classroom and they use it as well. So Erin, we're going to start with you. You're the computer science teacher and technology specialist at Kedron Elementary School in Fayette County, Georgia. She has 13 years of teaching experience. So Erin, how did you get into making apps with kids?

Erin Keith: Let me give you some of my background to help you understand my foray into mobile app development. I have been teaching for now 14 years — the first 10 years of my experience was high school English. In 2020, I jumped on board with virtual course development and got very involved in instructional technology and made a career shift from high school English to elementary computer science. That being said, I need everyone to know that my first experience with mobile app development came with almost zero computer science knowledge. Since then, I have taken a lot of classes and I feel much more qualified for the position that I'm in. But when I started, I had no coding experience, and it was easy. And so I feel like if I can do it, and if I can make it something really special for my students, then anyone can. I just really love it. It may sound intimidating at first, but the way that the software is presented, it's as simple as it can be, and it takes students through the entire design process so that they're learning those skills, as well as computer science, coding, app development — those pieces too.

Vicki Davis: So we have Mr. Edward Courtney also with us. He's a certified elementary and special education classroom teacher. He's worked in the field for eight years, and Mr. Courtney currently works for Long Beach Public Schools located in Long Beach, New York, at East Elementary School as a K-5 WINGS teacher. Okay Edward, I have to ask — what is a WINGS teacher? And then you can tell us how you got into app development.

Edward Courtney: WINGS is an acronym for “What I Need to Grow as a Student.” And the program came to life four years ago. I was a fourth grade teacher before that, and then this opportunity presented itself where I step out as a classroom teacher and become more of a building teacher. So I am able to interact with every student in our building. And through this program, we get to work on individualized projects. We get to push enrichment, technology, gameplay — all learning from what the student needs, diving into questions that the students have on their mind that they really can't get to in the typical classroom day. So we have an opportunity to explore different platforms. At a tech conference, I was in a room learning about Genius Time, which I implemented with the WINGS program. And they spoke about this app called MAD-learn. And I was like, I am very intrigued by this. My students will love it. How can we get this? Working with MAD-learn, I found this amazing platform that I'm sure we can all agree upon that the students love. I, along with Erin, know nothing about coding. I am still very much a basic user of coding, but the platform itself is so user friendly that someone like myself — like my third, fourth, fifth graders — can really dive into it and see their work come to life. And that's a huge plus in my book.

Vicki Davis: Well, I first saw this when a fifth grader, back when ISTE was in Atlanta, was presenting a science app that she had made. And I thought to myself, wow, I really want to do some more app building. We actually did a global collaborative app building project that first year. It's such a great way to incorporate project-based learning, problem-based learning, and really harnessing student passions and even writing. Let's talk about some of your favorite apps that your students have built, and I might sprinkle in a few of my favorites too. Edward, do you want to start?

Edward Courtney: Last year, when we fully embraced the MAD-learn platform and I introduced it to my students, we were actually going through a difficult time with our building with a potential school closure happening. The students — we were currently working in an activism and advocacy unit, and I started introducing them to MAD-learn. We learned the curriculum, and all the kids wanted to do was share how to save East School. Their focus on their apps was this advocacy piece. And while some students did save East School — share information, facts, all about what we could do to support it — other students pivoted in a different direction with educating others on save the rainforest, save the sea turtles, save our beach, being a beach community. So that really lent itself to the app development with advocacy, activism, and sharing knowledge with others that we can do something and implement change.

Erin Keith: I've had the opportunity now to try several different projects. I've encouraged students to identify problems and solve the problems with the apps that they're building. And when you leave it that open-ended, you get some really interesting results. We are also a Leader in Me school. So that's based on Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders, and so it's our character development program here at Kedron. We are currently using MAD-learn to develop digital portfolios for our students. It's a great application for the platform. Another one is I've encouraged students to build apps that will help the rising students. So I've had students create Meet the Teacher apps so that they are essentially informing the rising students of what they need to know — the ins and outs of the current teacher that they have in the classroom. And that's been really fun and entertaining. But my favorite way that I've seen this unfold is when I teach them how to build the app in computer science for a specific reason — maybe for the Leader in Me portfolio — they then have that skill and they apply it to other contexts. For example, our students participate in an InVenture project through Georgia Tech, and they get to build something. And these students will come to me and say, here is my idea, this is what I'm creating for InVenture, let's build this app.

Vicki Davis: I teach ninth grade, so a little bit older, but still the same concept. My students identify a problem. They've self-formed teams. I coach them a little bit, so I shift over into being coach versus quote “teacher.” And I do teach them some things about graphic design and color theory and all that sort of thing. But I actually teach the person on their team they have designated. So they have a project manager, assistant project manager, graphic designer. So the graphic designers might meet with me and do something, or the others might meet with me and do another thing. Then we have a shark tank, and we have three judges who come in and judge, and they compete and they present, and the parents come. And we've had everything from Drone Zone, an app that categorized all different types of drones, to iCare, an app that was all about — people care, but they don't know how to care, they don't know how to be kind. And one of the most powerful ones I ever saw that really changed the lives of the students that one year was one called Uncut. It was against self-harm. We had to be really, really careful, because as they proposed their project, I actually found it was a problem for some of the kids on the team. But they're like, we want to know how to help with this. I had to involve our counselor, and we had to do it. It was done in such a tasteful way, but it was really about “you are great the way you are.” And it was such a powerful, moving app. So your kids come in and they propose these apps and they pitch these apps and they create the apps. When your administration comes to you and says, “Hey Erin and Edward, what are the kids learning?” — what are some of the things you feel like that they're learning as they're creating the apps, besides “hey, I'm making an app,” right?

Erin Keith: So I spoke earlier to the design process, which is definitely a section of our computer science standards. It's easy to argue for computational thinking, for problem solving, for all of these skills that we're watching them master. But my favorite part — and what I think the future will desire of our students — are the soft skills. It's that they are working with each other, bouncing ideas off each other, they are learning to be persistent when they hit a wall and they can't really figure out what to do next. I think that it's incredible that they are able to develop apps as young children. But I don't think that when they graduate that that's really the skill that the future is going to need of them. I think it's going to be all of those other pieces that come to the forefront when they have the opportunity to do something like this.

Vicki Davis: Great answer. Edward?

Edward Courtney: Couldn't agree more. The soft skills behind the process of working together through the app building — the design process that is built into MAD-learn is so huge and really can be transferred into any other area beyond the app building, because it is a step-by-step process. It's methodical, where at the end you see what the results are and you can check it in real time and give yourself feedback in the moment and really respond to what you're doing in the moment. That is such a critical skill that students can transfer into other areas and see success in all of their growth and their learning.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so this is incredible, because that's exactly what — we're going to talk technology here — you know, it's the emotional intelligence. I also have older students, so I do teach them the appropriate ways to get UX feedback from AI, and how you can interact with AI and get your appropriate color scheme into logos. Now, since the inception of AI, the graphic design capabilities of my students getting feedback from AI — since they're in ninth grade and they're allowed to do that — are just amazing. But the other thing is I pull a lot of content from Adam Grant's book Hidden Potential and talk about, do teams work well together. I also share the statistic that in high school — typically, and actually all the way K through 12 — team captains are usually elected that are extroverts. But very often, the best team captains are actually not extroverts. And not that we want to be anti-extrovert, but it seems that in K-12 we're so pro-extrovert, to the point that it's hard for our teams to get anything done because we elect the person who talks the most. What's happened since I've been sharing — we listened to some of it, we talk about some of his content — is that the students who are elected the head of these teams, these self-forming teams, are now different students than would have been elected five years ago. And the team dynamics are incredible. But just helping the kids say, I'm going to look at who brings us together, I'm going to look at who helps us work together — that emotional intelligence is just priceless. My kids come back years later and say, wow, one of the best things I ever did was build an app. What do your students say when they get all the way through?

Erin Keith: Students who typically struggle with being distracted, or who can't really absorb a significant amount of instruction at one time — that's gone, because they want to do it. They're excited to do it. It's not something special that I had to orchestrate. It's just part of building the app that all of a sudden we have this excitement and this engagement, and we are accomplishing so much so quickly because they're so excited about it.

Edward Courtney: I introduced the platform in third grade. It's for my third, fourth, and fifth graders. And I see them at the start of third grade, see them again fourth grade, see them again fifth grade. And we celebrate the initial start at the end of the unit in third grade, and we say, oh my gosh, you made an app, congratulations. You see the progress that you made, and you see your design all the way through from start to finish. I reintroduced it again in fourth grade, and they were like, I want to change my app from last year, I want to finesse my app from last year. And they can then grow with the app, and there's no stopping point. They can revisit it, they can make tweaks as they learn and grow. And that's one of the most amazing things — that's one of the shining stars through this app, through our unit — is that they can grow with the app, and they can get real-time feedback that helps them to understand, grow, and learn along the way.

Vicki Davis: So we keep talking apps, and I do want to clarify that — people might say, well, are these apps protected? Right. They are private. They're not officially on the app store. There are QR codes where anybody can launch them who has the QR code and look at the apps. There is a way — I've had a couple of my students receive sponsorships to launch these onto the official app stores for the phones that anybody could download. But it is sort of a protected place for the kids. It's not like they're live immediately. It's a protected app environment. Edward, have you had any kids who've surprised you?

Edward Courtney: My three, four, five level have just started to dabble into AI. And with the way that technology is constantly evolving, and knowing that the skills we are teaching students today need to transfer into careers in the future — we don't even know what those careers could potentially be — it's so important for us to teach it the right way, or to teach it in a way that can be, again, transferable, things that can really see through many different iterations of it. So for myself, we are currently building an AI unit where students will become their own prompt engineers. That's the key, the meat of it all. If you're not putting in the correct prompt, then you're not going to get the output that you are ideally looking for. Doing it in a safe manner, doing it in the correct, efficient manner — that's what we are starting to work on with the elementary students. So far it's been really engaging. The kids enjoy it so much. We've dabbled into Magic Media with Canva, where they are creating these outrageous, fun, silly images that we then talk about, we reflect on — how do you know that this is AI? How does it look different than something real? It's making sure that they understand the technology, the tools, how to use them safely, how to use them correctly, and reflecting on that process. That's where the awe, the inspiration, the spark comes in. And it's been so much fun so far.

Vicki Davis: And let me applaud you, because some folks just rush into AI everything. But there's a darker side of AI, particularly with kids who can struggle with understanding that AI is a tool. It's not a he or she. It's not human. It is just a computer tool that you can chat with, which is just so powerful. But we do have to have care and wisdom. I had Dr. Nancy Frey on the show not too long ago, and she said, you know, it's okay to have a ban as long as you have a plan. You don't have to start with it wide open, but you do need to have a plan for how you're going to get there. And it's great to see that both of you are doing that. Mr. Edward Courtney, Erin Keith — thank you both for coming on the show.

Erin Keith: Thank you for having us, Vicki.

Edward Courtney: Thank you so much.

Vicki Davis: MAD-learn is my go-to app development tool for students, and here's why it stands out. It's not just about coding. MAD-learn guides students through the entire design process using six built-in modules covering ideation, planning, designing, building, testing, and launching — all in one place. My ninth graders have built everything from study tools to stress reduction apps to apps about hobbies that they love. And they own every step of the process. If you want your students to think like designers and builders, visit coolcatteacher.com/madlearn. That's coolcatteacher.com/madlearn.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. MAD-learn has compensated me to share information about MAD-learn. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

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