What’s New in 2.0? – Scratch.

Welcome to a new generation of Scratch! With Scratch 2.0, you can create new types of projects, work together in new ways, and learn new things in the process. Scratch 2.0 allows you to create, edit, and view projects directly in your web browser. (You no longer have to download or upload projects or install any software.)

cratch – Skill badge, iron-on patch – You are learning Scratch! Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.

Hopscotch.

Coding for kids: an iPad programming language. Hopscotch allows you to create an interactive program on the iPad by dragging blocks of code and dropping them into a scripting area. No typing required. For this first release we focused our efforts on creating an intuitive and beautiful programming experience.

We’re not aware of any other products quite like ours. No other programming language has been designed to be used on a mobile interface. So I think we can safely say that, in addition to making a beautiful and “addictive” product, we’ve also built the first language made specifically to be programmed on a mobile device. That’s something that we’re really proud of. 

Make games together with CraftStudio.

CraftStudio lets you build games from scratch in real-time over the Internet. Come jam with your team or join others to make your dream games come true!

Lego school promises the building blocks to successful learning – Danish firm brings its research into child development as well as cash to new Billund venture centred on inquiry-based education…

For many children, it’s the ultimate fantasy. For a few, it’s about to become a reality. In August a newly refurbished building in Billund, Denmark, will open its doors to become the first ever “Lego school”.
The fee-paying establishment is the brainchild of the toy manufacturer’s billionaire owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who hopes the school will help put the town in rural Jutland – a place Copenhageners refer to as Hicksville – on the map as the Capital of Children.

The International School of Billund will combine the international baccalaureate (IB) with the Danish school system and Lego’s emphasis on creativity and play. Centred around “inquiry-based learning”, the idea is that children are more motivated when they generate their own questions. As one prospective parent of the new school put it: “In the UK you’re taught how to pass exams. In Scandinavia you’re taught how to think.”

The school’s champions hope that by combining this free and easy approach to learning with Lego’s research into child development and the international baccalaureate, pupils will have the tools to both “think” and “do” in their chosen careers.

The headteacher is British physicist-turned-international-school-tsar Richard Matthews, a seasoned head, having led schools all over the world from Botswana to Grimsby. As one of the few men in Denmark to wear a tie, he is referred to by some prospective parents as “Tie Man”.

“Allowing time for creativity, play and getting into a state of flow is at the centre of Lego’s philosophy and we’ll be experimenting with this and other ideas in the timetabling,” he said. “But we also have a responsibility — the children’s education comes first and sometimes the old methods will be the best.”

The UK debate about child-centred learning was revived on Monday when Liz Truss, the early years minister, complained to the Daily Mail that in nurseries she had “seen too many chaotic settings, where children are running around” in an environment with “no sense of purpose”.

Announcing the 2013 White House Science Fair with Super Awesome Sylvia-

Visit WhiteHouse.Gov/ScienceFair on April 22nd to see live coverage, interviews and highlights from the 2013 White House Science fair

Super Awesome Sylvia!

San Francisco’s Exploratorium, which in 1969 rebooted the science museum concept into an immersive, participatory experience, is set to reopen in shiny new digs today at Pier 15. If you’ll be traveling to Maker Faire next month, you may want to pencil in a day for this. From a CNN article:

The culture of the Exploratorium has long been intertwined with the Maker Faire, the Bay Area festival that celebrates do-it-yourself projects. And its new shop, tinkering space and learning space expand on that maker spirit. The area where exhibits are tested and built with an impressive collection of large machinery is situated at the heart of the museum, now completely open so anyone can watch and chat up the staff and students at work.

Navigators USA.

The Navigators USA was created to provide a scouting experience for boys and girls who either can’t or don’t want to join the existing scouting organization in their local community. Whatever the reason, be it the local leadership, national policies, curriculum issues, gender separation, there should be more than one option for children and parents when it comes to scouting. The Navigators USA is here to teach many of the same skills and values of traditional scouting while emphasizing diversity, inclusion, and group problem solving. We urge you to review the material on the website, review our handbooks, and consider starting a Chapter in your community. When you start a Navigator Chapter you are not only helping the boys and girls in your community, you are helping to bring needed choice and opportunity to others. Join us and become part of tomorrow.

They also have patches.

Learn Web Design, Web Development, and More – Treehouse.

The extensive Treehouse library of step-by-step video courses and training exercises will give you a wide range of competitive, in-demand technology skills that will help you land your next dream job or build your startup idea. No experience? No problem!

You’ll earn badges as you journey through our extensive library of courses. These badges are an indicator of what skills you currently possess and are viewable by anyone (even recruiters from big companies!).

A Maker Club is a group that works together to practice skills, do creative projects and take epic adventures together. The kinds of Maker Clubs are infinite – it could be a punk band, robotics club, newspaper staff, film crew or just a bunch of friends hacking on random projects. Together we can accomplish what we can’t do alone.

Hackerspaces, makerspaces, maker scouts, hacker scounts, DIY clubs. It’s never been a better time to be a maker.

Videogami – Learn Hands on Skills with Video.

…create, aggregate, curate and deliver interactive lessons that teach a broad range of hands-on skills using mobile devices and tablets.

United States Wants to Attract Hackers to Public Sector @ NYTimes.com.

In the eighth grade, Arlan Jaska figured out how to write a simple script that could switch his keyboard’s Caps Lock key on and off 6,000 times a minute. When friends weren’t looking, he slipped his program onto their computers. It was all fun and games until the program spread to his middle school.

“They called my parents and told my dad I was hacking their computers,” Mr. Jaska, 17 years old, recalled. He was grounded and got detention. And he is just the type the Department of Homeland Security is looking for.

List of Hello World Programs in 300 Programming Languages.

Hello, world! Programs are usually written to make the text “Hello, world!” appear on a computer screen. This is also a basic sanity check for an installation of a new programming language. The first Hello World program appeared in chapter 1.1 of the first edition of Kernighan & Ritchie’s original book about C, ‘The C Programming Language’, in 1978. This is considered to be the first ever “Hello World!” program.

This is a complete list of “Hello World!” programs written in more than 300 existing programming languages including Assembly language, Low-level, High-level, Object Oriented, Document formats, Page description languages and Scripting languages.

We sent the Twin Cities Maker hackerspace a Raspberry Pi care package a couple of months ago, and they have started a number of interesting projects, including an “…automated cat food feeder (the hopper is from the Container Store), stumbling on getting gears printed to actuate the food hopper/dispenser.” TCMaker are also offering excellent RasPi classes at the Hack Factory worth checking out if you are in the area. Here’s their latest listing:

We have two upcoming Raspberry Pi Classes posted!

Classes start April 2nd, and April 20th.

So you want to play with a Raspberry Pi?  But maybe you haven’t been able to get one yet.  Well you’re in luck!  This class includes a Raspberry Pi, Wifi, Power, Cables, LEDs, SD Card!  This is everything you need to get the Pi going.  Don’t know what a Raspberry Pi is? Check out this article from the NYTimes.  The ticket includes $120 worth of hardware for you and the class tutorials.

Class Kit Includes:

• Adafruit Raspberry Pi Starter Kit
• Raspberry Pi w/512MB of RAM
• WiFi Card
• 4GB SD Card
• Power Supply + USB
• GPIO breakout board, bread board and jumpers.
• Misc LED, buttons, resistors, etc for the lessons.

This will be a two-day class.  A laptop computer with at least 4 Gigs of space for the SD card image will be required.

Day 1) Bootstrapping your Raspberry PI (~2 hours)

• Install Linux on your SD Card
• Start the Pi: Boot and config process
• How to run programs on your Pi & basic Linux intro

Day 2) Doing fun things, like Python and GPIO programing (~2 hours)

• Setup the WiFi device
• Python Basics, and functions.
• Blink an LED
• Get switch input
• Use a photo-resistor to read light levels
• Read data from a temperature sensor
• Read analog inputs

BYOPI Option

If you have a Raspberry Pi board already, it must be the version that was released December 2012 with 512MB of Memory on board.  The older boards have different PIN layouts that are inconsistent with the material that I’m teaching in class, and makes for a bit of a stumbling block when doing lessons.  Additionally, all of the kits are pre-buldled with a Raspberry Pi by default, and are pre-ordered well before the class begins so we have enough stock for all students.  This means that we may have extra Pis for sale at the start/end of the class.

Read more.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

PiFace in Winning Raspberry Pi Competition Entry. Thanks to Drew Fustini for the blog tip!

Congratulations to Richard Pate School for their super entry that uses PiFace Digital, in the “PA Consulting Raspberry Pi Competition”. This video features the children showing a school assembly how their invention works.

There’s also a link to a write up about their achievement. As well as budding computer scientists they’re clearly confident communicators too. The BBC have covered it here.

It’s really great to see this — the PiFace was designed to make it really easy for anyone to control things and sense inputs. In this case the children have used it to control the lock on the door and drive LEDs to indicate the status. The young inventors have used Scratch, and it shows what we’ve seen at workshops — no one is too young to learn to program!

So, congratulations to all involved, I’m sure that in the future we’ll see some of these youngsters as the engineers of the future, and who knows what they’ll go on to achieve.

Read more.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Hackschooling Makes Me Happy, shared by MAKE:

When 13-year-old Tahoe native Logan LaPlant takes the stage for his TEDx talk at the University of Nevada, what follows are 11 minutes of eloquent, confident wisdom on his style of education, which he calls “hackschooling.” Here’s a sample:

I’m not tied to one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to one particular approach. I hack my education. I take advantages of opportunities in my community and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better, faster result. It’s like a remix or a mashup of learning. … And here’s the cool part: because it’s a mindset, not a system, hackschooling can be used by anyone, even traditional schools.

He touts the virtues of having the hacker mindset:

A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parents’ basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way. Hackers are innovators. Hacker are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better. It’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.

I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology. Everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or Shane McConkey, having the hacker mindset can change the world….

Read more.

Secondary school 3-D printing program garners international attention, via 3Ders.org:

With a Japanese television news crew keeping close watch Monday, Buford Middle School science students crafted their own sound speakers from plastic and paper.

They did it using three-dimensional printers and computer design software to produce plastic supports, paper cones and other pieces.

“I think it’s interesting that they’re including 3-D computerization and printing into the education program at this level and what it means for the future of job training in the U.S.,” said Takashi Yanagisawa, a correspondent with Japan’s Nippon Television. “This is what President [Barack] Obama talked of in his State of the Union address, about bringing technology into schools for job training.”

Yanagisawa and his cohorts are producing a segment for Japanese television that will feature the Buford Middle School class as an example of U.S. efforts to bring more technology into schools.

“We’re in on the ground floor of bringing manufacturing and technology into the classrooms,” said Jim Henderson, assistant superintendent for Charlottesville schools. “We’re participating with Piedmont Virginia Community College and the University of Virginia and we hope to make this a seventh- through 12th-grade program. This is the start.”

The start is the result of a $300,000 state grant to create a “laboratory school for advanced manufacturing technologies.” …

Read more.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

Build. Make. Hack. Grow. – DIY. DIY stories @diy. Videos of some of the coolest kids on DIY.org!

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling @ Aerogramme Writers’ Studio.

These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coates, Pixar’s Story Artist. Number 9 on the list - When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next – is a great one and can apply to writers in all genres.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

DIY Guides – Open Sourcerer.

We created this guide to walk you step by step through using Git and Github – really useful tools in open source. At the same time, it is walking you through completing all of the challenges for the Open Sourcerer Skill!

Women’s History Month 2013.

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society.

Here are some ready-to-use lesson plans, student activities, collection guides and research aids for educators.

We Are All Makers: Dale Dougherty and Anil Dash.

The high-tech return of high school shop class – Schools of Thought @ CNN.com Blogs.

What’s emerging in schools now is something tougher to pin down. In one district, it might be a fancy new school dedicated to teaching tech. In another, an apprenticeship program. Some schools design career and technical classes to line up with college-prep courses that guide students to become engineers, chefs, CEOs or doctors. Almost 80% of high school students who concentrated on career and technical studies pursued some type of postsecondary education within two years of finishing high school, the U.S. Department of Education reported in 2011.

“We’re hearing policy makers talk about it more often. Certain districts are looking at career and technical education as a way to reform schools,” DeWitt said. “The focus on project-based learning, how to get students engaged more, is something that’s caught on.”

Python Tutorial | Learn Python @ Learnstreet.

Welcome to the LearnStreet beginner course on Python. The Python programming language is a high level programming language that is used in a wide spectrum of applications — from web design and game programming to scientific research. Its simple and flexible syntax makes it easy to learn and understand, but still powerful and expressive. By the end of this course, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Python language, and be able to complete some cool projects in the Code Garage section. Keep in mind this course uses Python version 2.7. Python 2.7 is more widely used in industry, and therefore more valuable to learn. The most recent version is 3.2, which has some key syntax differences. We have designed this course for people who have no prior programming background. In this course, we will teach you some fundamental programming concepts through Python. Throughout this course, you will write code to apply what you’ve learned to solve programming problems. In addition to the instructional course content, you will be working towards building an event planner in Python which will be fully functional and ready for you to use by the end of this course. Now, click on the big black box – the Python interpreter – below this to start coding away!

From littleBits:

On Sunday March 3rd, the littleBits team will be giving an electronics prototyping class at The Harlem School of the Arts as part of the AIGA Inspire/Make Free Teen Workshops. Students will use littleBits to design generative art machines, inspired by artwork they see during a tour of the MET museum. Creative possibilities are endless as students design drawing machines that can respond to light and sound or spin to create unique designs. Check back soon to see what we create.

Read more.

Learn about a new “superpower” that isn’t being taught in in 90% of US schools. Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi. Directed by Lesley Chilcott.

http://www.code.org/

How to Save Science: Education, the Gender Gap, and the Next Generation of Creative Thinkers @ Brain Pickings.

The skills of the 21st century need us to create scholars who can link the unlinkable.

Read more.

When Our Local Libraries Closed, Here’s How We Designed Our Own | Cities on GOOD.

What would you do if your city announced it would close 19 out of 25 local libraries? Protest, complain, become a cynic, or take action and create something new? A group of residents from Rotterdam chose the latter when we learned that our libraries would be closing by the end of 2012.

Read more.

Obama endorses required high school coding classes.

President Obama says he wouldn’t mind seeing a curriculum requirement for American high school students to learn a programming language.

“I think it makes sense, I really do,” was his response to the idea posed in a live Google+ Hangout earlier today. “I want to make sure that (young people) know how to produce stuff using computers and not just consume stuff.”

MIT’s Learning Creative Learning.

Learning Creative Learning is a course offered at the MIT Media Lab. It introduces ideas and strategies for designing technologies to support creative learning. This semester, for the first time, P2PU and the Media Lab are working together to bring the course online. We are opening up the seminars, course materials, and hands-on activities to anyone with a computer and Internet access. It’s a big experiment, we expect to learn a lot, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

Some of our favorite educators are teaching a MOOC about learning! Be sure to check out the course listing to learn from Resnick, Ito, Dougherty, Mako, Rosenbaum, Amon and others!

Music box, backwards Bach, orbifolds and wooden bowl.

My friend Dan (of the Science Brothers) has an impressive element collection. I teamed up with him to build an equally impressive display for his large collection; complete with 120 PWM channels of LED backlight and an Arduino at the controls. It even uses code from the Adafruit Tiny Arduino Music Visualizer. Check out the results:

P.S. It has been a while since I posted. Never fear, my wedding is one month out and afterwards I should once again know what it is like to have time to do other things. I’ll be back!

List of freely available programming books @ Stack Overflow. Great list!

Suzie Boss: How Are We Preparing Students to Be Tomorrow’s Innovators?.

According to the just-released Gallup-HOPE index for 2012, developing a world-changing invention is an aspiration shared by 42 percent of youth in grades 5-12. That’s good news. Given the scale of challenges facing us–in our own backyards and around the globe–it’s easy to see that we’re going to need every good idea the next generation has to offer.

What are schools doing to prepare today’s students to be tomorrow’s innovators?

GSF2013.

The Google Science Fair is an online science competition open to students ages 13-18 from around the globe. We’re looking for ideas that will change the world. To get started, all you’ll need is a Google account.

15,000 Raspberry Pis for UK schools – thanks Google! @ Raspberry Pi.

Today’s been a bit unlike most Tuesdays at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Today we’re the recipients of a very generous grant from Google Giving, which will provide 15,000 Raspberry Pi Model Bs for schoolkids around the UK. Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has just been to visit Cambridge, and he and Eben have been teaching a classroom of local kids to code all morning. Lucky kids.

(Usually on Tuesday mornings we eat biscuits and do engineering. This is a bit of a change of pace.)

Read more.

Most people view computer coding as a narrow technical skill. Not Mitch Resnick. He argues that the ability to code, like the ability to read and write, is becoming essential for full participation in today’s society. And he demonstrates how Scratch programming software from the MIT Media Lab makes coding accessible and appealing to everyone — from elementary-school children to his 83-year-old mom.

Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design @ DML Hub via BB.

A new research report released by the Connected Learning Research Network is a call for educators, parents, youth, media-makers, geeks, creatives and intellectuals everywhere to work together to make the learning riches of the online world accessible to everyone. The researchers provide evidence of the importance of making, tinkering, exploration, collaboration, and problem-solving in learning to thrive in today’s networked world. They also cite growing equity gap between young people who are highly connected and activated 21st Century learners and those who are subject to no-frills education and have little support for enriched, socially networked, or inquiry-based learning.

‘We’re seeing the tremendous potential of new media for advancing learning,’ said says lead author Mimi Ito, a professor of anthropology, informatics and education at UC Irvine. ‘But, right now, it’s only the most activated and well-supported learners who are using connected learning to boost their learning and opportunity. We believe many more young people can experience this kind of learning, but there’s no question we’re at risk of seeing yet another way privileged individuals can gain advantage — even though the Internet and digital technology has the potential to even the playing field and multiply the opportunities for all youth to find their place and achieve.’

PDF here.

MaKey-MaKey folded into the Night Zookeeper project:

On Monday we were lucky enough to visit Oaklands Primary School in South London to run the Night Zookeeper project. We had visited the school last year and so were keen to keep the experience fresh and exciting for the children. Therefore we planned an extension to this project which was a little different to our previous visit…

The day had a very special twist, as we introduced our newly acquired MaKey MaKey http://www.makeymakey.com/ for the first time. This product allows you to use everyday objects such as: bananas, sunglasses, water and even human bodies as an alternative keyboard and it works with all computer programmes. We created a Night Zookeeper board game and enabled children to link their physical creations seamlessly with the digital world. 

The children began the day by creating their very own Night Zoo animals. They then transferred these animals onto a special board game piece. The children designed the enclosures for their animals and pieced them all together to create a large zoo map. They even had a go at making models of the Night Zookeeper himself. (My arms are obviously a lot longer through children’s eyes!) Each child then uploaded information about their animal, including an image which they had created using our new (not yet available) mobile drawing app. We then introduced the children to the MaKey MaKey and they began to explore its capabilities…

Read more.

Every Monday is Makey Makey™ Monday here at Adafruit! The MaKey MaKey – by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, made by JoyLabz! Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Find out more details at makeymakey.com or watch the video at makeymakey.com. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between! If you have a cool project you’ve made with your Makey Makey be sure to send it in to be featured here!

Make the Metric system the standard in the United States, instead of the Imperial system. It’s a petition you can sign…

The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit – despite the fact that practically every other country that we interact with uses Metric.

Why should we convert to using the Metric System? Because it’s superior, less convoluted – everything is ordered in units of tens, while the chaotic arrangement of the Imperial System slows things down for us – not only in terms of education, but also businesses, science, foreign relations, and daily life.

More…

I “heart” METRIC – Requirements Sheet & skill badge. The Metric System is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world. The United States is the only industrialised country that has not defined a metric system as its official system of measurement, although the use of a metric system has been sanctioned for use there since 1866. Although the United Kingdom committed to officially adopting a metric system for many measurement applications, one is still not in universal use there and the customary imperial system is still in common and widespread use. Although the originators intended to devise a system that was equally accessible to all, it proved necessary to use prototype units under the custody of government or other approved authorities as standards. Until 1875, control of the prototype units of measure was maintained by the French Government when it passed to an inter-governmental organisation – the Conférence générale des poids et mesures (CGPM). It is now hoped that the last of these prototypes can be retired by 2014 via Wikipedia.

Did you know all our badges are made in the USA *and* the embroidery machines use solar power! These badges are fueled by a star!

LEGO Mindstorms EV3: The Better, Faster, Stronger Generation Of Robotic Programming.

Lego is back with another generation of MindStorms, the company’s consumer robotics line aimed at introducing application programming to a younger generation. Kids these days grow up with so much focus on the virtual self, but MindStorms works as a bridge to connect software programming with real-world, physical actions.

The new kit includes directions for up to 17 different robots, most of which look like scary-style animals, such as snakes and scorpions.

Mindstorms has been around for almost 14 years now, but Mindstorms EV3 marks the first time that users can program directly onto the brand-new EV3 Intelligent Brick. In past iterations, users were only allowed to program their robots from the computer and then run the application through the robot. The Intelligent Brick allows users to add or change commands and actions directly from the brick.

Read more. & photo gallery at the VERGE.

The Hacker School Experience @ GeekMom | Wired.com.

When Hacker School made a big splash in the news last spring, it was due to their new grants for women. Sponsored by Etsy, GitHub and Palantir, the grants were aimed to help make Hacker School more affordable and inviting for women interested in attending the three-month student-led educational program. Hacker School is actually free for the accepted few, but living in their New York locale for three months can get pretty pricey.

Numberphile – Videos about Numbers and Stuff.

Videos about numbers – it’s that simple. Videos by Brady Haran.

We just passed 3 million projects on Scratch website (scratch.mit.edu). Thanks to everyone who has imagined, programmed, and shared!!

— mres (@mres) December 29, 2012

Incredible!

Python For Beginners.

This is a new serie of articles here at Python for beginners, that are supposed to be a starting point for completely beginners of Python. See it as a cheat sheet, reference, manual or whatever you want. The purpose is to very short write down the basics of Python. Let’s start with the Basics of Python.

But wait, there’s MORE!

Python @ Codecademy.

Python is a powerful and expressive language that has very simple syntax. If you’re unsure of which programming language to learn, then Python is a great choice. The language is used in a variety of disciplines: application, web, and game development. Python can do it all and you’ll be well on your way to mastery at the end of this track.

One you go through the lessons, award yourself or someone who also deserves it, one of these!

Python – Skill badge, iron-on patch. You’ve learned the Python programming language! Python is an easy-to-learn and programming language that’s popular for its powerful capabilities and human-readable code. The Python logo is used with permission from the Python Foundation.

Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” to celebrate achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.

The Python badge is for use with educators, classrooms, workshops, Maker Faires, TechShops, 4H clubs, Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and around the world to reward beginners on their skill building journey!

This beautiful badge is made in the USA.

With Growth Of ‘Hacker Scouting,’ More Kids Learn To Tinker : NPR.

Countless kids have grown up with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts or Campfire Girls, but for some families, the uniforms and outdoor focus of traditional Scouting groups don’t appeal.

In recent months, Scoutlike groups that concentrate on technology and do-it-yourself projects have been sprouting up around the country. They’re coed and, like traditional Scouting organizations, award patches to kids who master skills.

…

The Hacker Scouts don’t wear uniforms, but soon they’ll be able to earn something akin to merit badges, made by the kid-friendly DIY electronics company Adafruit Industries.
Badges range from “learn to solder,” “aerial quadcopter” and “high-altitude balloon” badges to the “Dumpster-diving” badge — “for when you get dirty but get some free stuff,” explains Adafruit founder Limor Fried.

Read more…

Time For Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts 2.0?

Adafruit iron-on “skill badges” / patches and partners – Adafruit offers fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. Please visit our badge section to purchase badges or contact us for more information on how educators can participate. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share. From the “I CAN USE A LASER CUTTER” or “I CAN SOLDER” to “I LEARNED MICRO-CONTROLLERS” Adafruit has designed open-source badges to reward students, beginners and individuals who are learning with Adafruit products.

Check out a new player in educational modular electronics for young makers, currently over at Kickstarter:

ATOMS give kids of any age the ability to make their toys DO things. And not just new toys – ATOMS were built to work with the stuff kids already have, like LEGOs, costumes, stuffed animals, Barbies and action figures. ATOMS don’t require any electronics skills or programming experience – or supervision from a parent with an engineering degree. In fact, because of the tiny electronics built into each one, kids can make all sorts of cool stuff within 5 minutes of taking ATOMS out of the box.

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Sesame best practices guide for children’s app development @ The Sesame Workshop Blog.

Touch screen technology is revolutionizing interactive digital experiences for children. No longer do our little ones need to wait to learn to navigate a mouse or press keyboard keys in order to access a host of interactive content designed for them. Instead, we see toddlers and preschoolers confidently navigating their parents’ iPhones, iPads, and other touch screen devices with astonishing agility and purpose. The explosion of apps for young children is not surprising; there is high demand and high appeal.

Read more.