Activity 1.2.2 Wikipedia That
Introduction
Tonya has an idea for an
app. She wants to be
able to command her
phone with a key phrase
like "look up such-andsuch" and have it fetch
both the Wikipedia
entry and a page of
search results from her
favorite search engine.
She's brainstormed
some ideas and selected
one. She documented
her work in her
engineering notebook,
and the first page about
this project is shown
here. You're going to
help her by creating
your own
implementation of the
design.
You will learn about the
parts of a URL, the
address for fetching
something from the
web over the Internet.
Materials



Computer with browser
Android device with AI Companion
Google ID
Procedure
1. Consider the following URL. Identify the different parts of the URL.
http://tumblingPhotos.com/search/flower?login=no
2. In the excerpt of Tonya's engineering notebook, you can see her description of the
problem and the beginning of her brainstorming for solutions. Comment on the
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Introduction to Computer Science Activity 1.2.2 Wikipedia That – Page 1
quality of her documentation based on this excerpt. What is good about it? What
could be better?
3. Tonya selected a solution similar to the idea recorded as #2 during her
brainstorming. However, she has decided to begin by creating the idea sketched
as #1 to get started. The interface will require two WebViewer components from
the User Interface drawer. What other App Inventor components will you need to
create the interface shown in her diagram?
4. You will be creating the functioning interface in App Inventor. Decompose the
problem into several tasks and describe the tasks.
5. Describe the code necessary for the first programming part of the task using
natural language or pseudocode.
6. Create the solution. Record your development process. Your final result should
include three or more versions of your program as AIA files, each demonstrating
incremental progress toward the solution. Submit your work as directed by your
teacher.
Hint #1: Use a browser to submit a Google search or to find a Wikipedia page.
Examine the URL. Try this again with a different query and see if you can identify
the pattern for each website.
Hint #2: Wikipedia and Google search each change any spaces in the query string
to another character. You could use the replace all text block to do this.
Similarly, there are blocks that will let you capitalize the first letter for Wikipedia.
However, once you identify the pattern used for URLs by each of these websites,
you might experiment to see what happens if you violate the pattern in specific
ways.
Conclusion Questions
1. To open a Google page or a Wikipedia page, you had to figure out what URL
each of these website used to look up a particular query. You might have figured
this out by reverse engineering, in which you entered a query into a search bar at
google.com or wikipedia.org and then looked at the result to figure out how it
was constructed. Reverse engineering can also be used to figure out how a
physical product is put together, how it works, or how it is made. How might
reverse engineering of software be similar to reverse engineering of a physical
product? How is it different?
2. Reflect on your collaborative process. Describe the moment you did the best in
supporting your partner's progress as a programmer. Describe the moment your
partner did the best in supporting your progress as a programmer.
© 2015 Project Lead The Way, Inc.
Introduction to Computer Science Activity 1.2.2 Wikipedia That – Page 2
© 2015 Project Lead The Way, Inc.
Introduction to Computer Science Activity 1.2.2 Wikipedia That – Page 3