How one teacher doubled enrollment in app design with Thunkable

At George Washington High School in Kanawha County, West Virginia, Martin Nicolay set out to teach students to code real apps, then add AI by the end of the semester. He made Thunkable the core curriculum for his introductory app design course. In one year, enrollment grew from 45 to 90 students, and every student now finishes the semester by building a working app of their own.

At a glance

• Educator: Martin Nicolay, Teacher
• Course: Coding, App and Game Design 1
• Students: 90, grades 9 to 12
• Before Thunkable: Scratch, MIT App Inventor
• Result: Enrollment doubled in one year, from 45 to 90 students

The program: step one of a CTE pathway

Martin's course opens Coding, AI and Game Design, a four-course CTE pathway the school built. Students who complete all four courses earn CTE completer status and college credit.

His classes mix freshmen through seniors, and many students arrive having never coded. Martin groups them in teams of up to three so everyone has support, and he builds every lesson around making something real.

Why Thunkable: the tool students liked most

Of every tool Martin tested with his classes, Thunkable was the one students liked most. The opportunity reached him through the West Virginia Department of Education, then his county and his curriculum principal. After teaching with Scratch and MIT App Inventor, the block-based approach felt familiar from day one.

He moved every class to Thunkable in a single semester and worked directly with the Thunkable team as the curriculum took shape, passing along what his students said in real time.

How the course runs

A rhythm built for learning by doing

Each lesson runs over two days. On Monday and Tuesday, Martin introduces the new skill and students start building. On Wednesday and Thursday, they finish the app from a step-by-step guide with a picture for every step. Fridays are for catching up, or free time for students who are done.

The guides do most of the teaching. When something breaks, students bring it to Martin, and fixing it together turns the mistake into a short lesson. Week by week, the guides give less direction, and everything builds toward a month-long final project where students design and build an original app.

What students built: original apps from their own ideas

About half of Martin's students arrived knowing what they wanted to build. The rest talked ideas through with classmates or asked ChatGPT for suggestions, then made the choice themselves.

A lacrosse scoreboard

A student on the lacrosse team built an app to track score, period and penalties, with the school's logo, for his teammates to use.

A calculator

Working alone, a student who came in with no interest in coding recreated a full phone calculator. Martin expected a simple project until he opened the code and saw the logic behind it.

An AI advice app

One group used AI to answer classmates' questions in the voice of a playful 1970s persona, with guardrails they wrote themselves to keep it school-appropriate.

AI in the classroom: a tool, not a shortcut

One lesson has students build an app, then ask AI to build the same one and compare the two. By the final project, most students used AI for layout, letting it generate screens, buttons and backgrounds. Then they deleted the generated logic and coded the functionality themselves. Teachers choose when the built-in AI tools are on.

"They saw that AI isn't 'type it in and your app is done.' There's a lot more work that goes into it."

Part of a statewide AI education pilot

Martin's classroom was one of four West Virginia high schools in an AI education pilot supported by The Rockefeller Foundation. Teachers received professional development before it began, and each week paired hands-on Thunkable tutorials with lessons on entrepreneurship.

• About 120 high school students took part.
• They built about 80 working apps.
• 44% reported more interest in starting their own business.

"Jobs of the future will reward people who know how to build with AI, and West Virginia's students are proving they can do exactly that."

- Andrew Sweet, Vice President of Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation

Results: enrollment doubled in one year

The course grew from 45 students to 90 and now fills three of Martin's seven periods. Moving to a full credit per semester helped, but Martin credits most of the growth to word of mouth. Nearly every group turned in a working final app, and some parents have told him it's their child's favorite class.

What's next: business skills, weighted equally with code

In year two, students learn from the first day to ask who an app is for, how to market it and whether to charge for it. It's a side of app building that standard computer science courses rarely cover.

"The goal of the Thunkable curriculum is to teach you how to code, but also the behind-the-scenes side of app design."

In Martin's words

"It's a perfect system for teaching kids how to code an app who have never coded anything in their life. It's so easy to use, the kids like it, the UI is clean, and everything is so well integrated. It's turnkey, zero to 60."

Bring app creation to your classroom

Thunkable's project-based curriculum includes 100+ pages of ready-to-use materials and complete lesson plans, and no prior coding experience is required for educators or students. Teachers get a dashboard to view and comment on student projects, along with onboarding, training and support.

Talk to our Education team

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