6.4 App Examples Using Thunkable

You’ve done amazing work planning your MVP, maybe sketching prototypes, thinking about partners, and even planning your marketing and revenue. Now comes the really exciting (and sometimes challenging) part: building your app in Thunkable!

You might have already started coding, or perhaps you’re looking at your plans and wondering, “Okay, how do I actually make a login screen work?” or “How do I show locations on a map in Thunkable?” This lesson is designed to help bridge that gap by providing practical examples and tutorials for common app features.

Lesson Topic: 6.4 App Examples Using Thunkable

Section 1: Learning by Example (Not Just Copying!)

The goal of this lesson isn’t to give you a finished app exactly like yours. Your ideas are unique! Instead, the tutorials provided are like guided examples or mini-lessons focusing on specific functionalities.

Think of it like learning to cook. You might follow a recipe for rolex (chapati roll-up) to learn the technique of frying the chapati and rolling it with eggs. Then, you can adapt that technique to create your own unique roll-up with different fillings based on what you want to make!

Similarly, these Thunkable tutorials will show you how to use certain components and block combinations for a specific purpose. Your job is to:

1. Understand the technique being used.
2. Think about how you can apply or adapt that technique to build the features you planned for your app.

It might feel challenging, but figuring out how to adapt examples to your own needs is a huge part of learning to code and create!

Section 2: Finding Help When You’re Stuck (Quick Recap)

As you work through tutorials or build your own features, you will get stuck sometimes. Remember where to look for help:

• Google Search: Be specific! Search for things like “Thunkable save user data”, “Thunkable map show user location”, “Thunkable how to use Firebase login”.
• Thunkable Docs: The official documentation often has detailed explanations of components.
• Thunkable Community Forum: Ask questions! Other users and Thunkable experts often provide helpful answers. Search the forum first, your question might already be answered.
• YouTube: Search the official Thunkable channel or look for tutorials from other creators.
• ChatGPT: Can be helpful for explaining programming logic or suggesting how to structure blocks, even if it can’t give you visual blocks directly.

Don’t struggle alone for too long – use these resources!

Section 3: Choose Your Adventure (The Tutorials)

The lesson provides links to tutorials for four common types of app functionalities. Look at your MVP feature list and see which one seems most relevant to a key part of your project:

1. Login App Tutorial:
   • Use if: Your app needs users to create accounts and log in securely.
   • Teaches: How to use Firebase (an online database for user authentication), potentially Cloudinary (for storing profile pictures online), and maybe Google Sheets for storing user info. Provides a starter template.
2. Location App Tutorial:
   • Use if: Your app needs to display information on a Map, show markers for specific places (like clinics, schools, tourist spots in Jinja), maybe show details about those places, or even allow users to navigate or call them.
   • Teaches: Using the Map component, adding Markers, displaying info, using the Web Viewer component (to show websites within the app), and the Share component (to initiate phone calls). (Multi-part video).
3. Tracking App Tutorial:
   • Use if: Your app needs to save information specific to each user on their own phone (data that doesn’t need to be shared between users). Examples: tracking personal habits, saving game progress, recording exercise routines, logging daily expenses.
   • Teaches: Using stored variables – Thunkable’s way to save data locally on the device so it’s remembered even after the app closes. (Video tutorial with optional advanced parts).
4. Info App Tutorial:
   • Use if: Your app needs to display information that is the same for all users, and you want to manage that information easily (e.g., in a spreadsheet). Examples: showing news updates, providing tips or guides, displaying a directory of resources. It also shows how users might add information to a shared list.
   • Teaches: Connecting your app to Google Sheets to display data, potentially letting users submit data back to the sheet. (Playlist tutorial).

Your Task Now: Discuss with your team – which of these tutorial topics best matches a challenging or important feature you need to build for your MVP?

Section 4: Let’s Build & Learn! (Activity – Complete a Tutorial)

Time to dive in and learn by doing!

Your Mission: Choose ONE relevant tutorial from the list above and work through it carefully.

Task:

1. Select: Pick the tutorial that seems most helpful for learning a technique you need.
2. Follow Along: Click the link in the lesson. If it’s a video, watch it closely, pausing as needed. If there’s a starter project, remix it. Follow the steps shown in Thunkable. Don’t just copy-paste blocks – try to understand why each step is done.
3. Focus on Learning: Pay attention to:
   • Which specific Thunkable components are being used? (Map, Firebase Sign In, stored variable, Google Sheets component, etc.)
   • How are the blocks structured to make the feature work? (Loops? Conditionals? Variables? Function calls?)
4. Think & Adapt (Crucial Step!): While you are following the tutorial, constantly ask yourself:
   • “How is this technique similar to what my app needs?”
   • “How could I change these blocks or components to fit my specific goal?”
   • “What part of this tutorial can I reuse or modify for my feature?”
   • (Example: “This tracking app saves ‘green points’. I can use the same stored variable blocks to save ‘study minutes’ or ‘water consumption’.”)

Section 5: Applying What You Learned (Reflection)

Once your team has worked through a tutorial, take a few minutes to discuss:

• What were the main Thunkable components or coding techniques you learned?
• How directly applicable is this tutorial to your own app? What modifications would you need to make?
• Did working through the tutorial give you new ideas or clarify how to build a feature you were unsure about?
• What parts were still confusing or challenging? What questions do you still have? (Use the help resources to find answers!)

Mwebale Kusoma! (Thank you for studying/learning!) These tutorials are valuable resources to help you translate your app plans into working Thunkable blocks. Remember, the goal isn’t just to complete the tutorial app, but to learn the underlying techniques and gain the confidence to adapt them for your own unique and innovative ICT Club project. Choose a tutorial that fits your needs and start building! Mukama Mulungi! (God is Good!)

DIVE DEEPER

You’re now at the stage where you’re ready to start building your app maybe you’ve even begun already!

Or maybe you’re still figuring out how to piece everything together to make your app function the way you want.

We’ve put together a list of common app types that many ICT Club teams work on. The tutorials are meant to guide and inspire you. They won’t walk you through every step (where’s the fun in that?), but they’ll help you understand how to use certain Thunkable features. From there, it’s your job to apply what you’ve learned to your own app.

It might be challenging but that’s the heart of learning!

WHERE TO FIND HELP

Search Online

Google (or alternate search engine) “Thunkable” and whatever feature you want. For example, you might Google “Thunkable quiz” if you wanted to make an app that quizzed users on a topic.

Thunkable website

Lots of great resources provided by Thunkable. Start with Thunkable docs but check out the rest of the website for great resources.

Forum Help

Community forum for Thunkable users is a friendly place to post a question and get some expert help!

Youtube

Thunkable has their own channel with lots of great tutorials.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is great at helping with coding questions, even block-based coding platforms like Thunkable. You won’t get visual blocks but very good text-based answers

ACTIVITY: COMPLETE A TUTORIAL

Follow a tutorial that aligns with your project

1. Choose one example app below that has some of the features of your solution app.
2. Complete the tutorial, bearing in mind that the app may not be exactly like your app.
3. Use the experience to learn more about the components and how they can be used within an app.

Click on an app to access the corresponding tutorial.

Login App

Location App

Tracking App

Info App

Login App

This tutorial shows you one way to add signup/login capability to your app using Firebase, Cloudinary, and Google Sheets. Dave Wolber provides a great starter template (log into Thunkable first) for you. You can then add the critical features to your app that actually solve your problem.

Location App

This app is a good example of using the Map component to provide location-based information to users. In this case, volunteer opportunities. The app also uses Web Viewer to display website information, and a Share component so the user can call volunteer organizations from the app.

Part 1 – add Map, Markers, and basic information

Part 2 – add second screen to display website and make phone calls

Tracking App

This app is an example of storing a user’s personal information on their phone using stored variables so they can track something – in this case, how green they are acting.

Optional: 

Part 2 – Add consecutive day tracking 

Part 3 (advanced) – Test by adding a Test button to set variable values behind the scenes.

Information App

This tutorial shows you how to share information from Google Sheets with all users of the app, in this case, Tech Superstars.  There is a full playlist for this tutorial, so keep going to learn how to add an input screen so users can add their own information to the app and have it display to all users.

REFLECTION

The example apps in this lesson provide some features that you may have decided to include in your mobile app. Chances are they are not exactly like your app.