Bitsbox is designed primarily for elementary school students, but with a couple of challenging additions, the apps in the Let's App! booklet are plenty challenging for middle and even high school kids.
Lead a five-minute discussion about programming and building apps with students before they start working on the computers. You might ask the following questions:
Who knows what an app is?
Who creates apps and how are they created?
Wrap up the discussion by telling students that they'll be building their own simple apps by writing computer code.
Hand out the Let's App! booklets and send students to their computers.
Direct students to bitsbox.com/go and ask them to work through the short online tutorial.
Ask students to choose two or three apps from the booklet to work on.
Encourage students to build a new app from scratch. Here are two suggestions you can write on the board:
Disappearing Ink: Build a drawing app where the "ink" disappears a few moments after you apply it to the screen. (This app is a mashup of BlockCraft and So Long, Homework!)
Drive Me Crazy: Build an app where a car drives all over the screen, entirely by itself. (This app is a mashup of Dig, Bunny, Dig! and Red Racer)