"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea"
Great news! Thanks to Fabrizio, JP, all the KiCad developers and Adam – we will soon have a KiCad iron-on skill patch!
What is KiCad?
The KiCad EDA Suite project aims at creating a portable, cross-platform, Free/Libre/Open-Source EDA Suite. That is capable of schematic and printed circuit board design. The code is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. KiCad is an open source software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design of schematics for electronic circuits and their conversion to PCBs (printed circuit board) design. KiCad was developed by Jean-Pierre Charras, and features an integrated environment for schematic capture and PCB layout design. Tools exist within the package to create a bill of materials, artwork and Gerber files, and 3D views of the PCB and its components.
Code Racer is a multi-player live coding game that teaches newbies how to code a basic website using HTML and CSS, and tests intermediate and advanced users on their coding speed and agility. Players race against each other and the clock to complete coding challenges, unlocking weapons and rewards along the way.
Treehouse looks really interesting, we like the way they’re using badges as learning tools.
This is the vision of a growing number of education reformers who feel that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market. The Mozilla Foundation, the group that develops the popular Firefox Web browser, is designing a framework to let anyone with a Web page—colleges, companies, even individuals—issue forgery-proof digital badges that will give potential employers details about an applicant’s training at the click of a mouse. In September, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $2 million grant program, run in coordination with Mozilla, to encourage organizations to try the badge system. More than 300 groups have applied.
The physical ones are mostly for anyone to self-determine if they want them, schools are using these to award the kids when they’re done learning how to solder for example. As far as certifying these as something more than that, we wanted to go in another direction.
Our “digital” online version of the badges will be awarded by Limor “Ladyada” Fried herself and we’re basing that on specific criteria and it will be project based, not test taking We’re really excited to see all the “merit badge” efforts and we’re curious where it will go. We’ll have our beta for our online version up soon, we have some testers now and we’ll be able to share the live system very soon!
This is a “round” 5v 40ma solar panel (our solar “badge” you could say) we’ll be talking about this on the show-and-tell and/or ASK AN ENGINEER on saturday night… amongst many many other new things. it’s 2″ x 2″ … 50 x 50 mm.
Starting today, developers who use Microsoft Visual Studio have a new way to highlight their skills, get recognition for the amazing work they do every day, and add some competitive fun to the development day.
Visual Studio Achievements, a Visual Studio plug-in, enables developers to unlock badges and compete against one another for a place on a leader board based on the code they write, its level of sophistication, and the Visual Studio capabilities they use to do so. Developers finally have the ability to actually show their friends, colleagues, project managers, spouses and customers how good they are at what they do all day and sometimes into the night.
It’s a badge world now, we’re all just living in it
Many of you are using the Adafruit skill badges to rewards students, kids and workshop participants. One of most requested new badge for us to add was one for PHP. So we talked wth Vincent who designed the very cute PHP elephant and we now have permission to make these! The elePHPant created by Vincent PONTIER – www.elroubio.net
These are some test stickers, they’re amazing. Our partner (NeedleNerds) who does our badges is doing an amazing job helping us create the best quality, glossy vinyl stickers for our badge system. These stickers are made in the USA and all the power used for the embroidery machine and sticker machines comes from their solar panels. We’re so happy with these! We took our laptop out and someone was able to instantly tell some of favorite things based on the stickers
We’ll have the stickers in the store soon, and lots of ways to earn them for free
Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It’s great project for beginners: An easy soldering kit with instant gratification. Essentially, its a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper. This badge is a great reward for a fun workshop!
Ohm’s law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance one arrives at the usual mathematical equation that describes this relationship. I is the current through the conductor in units of amperes, V is the potential difference measured across the conductor in units of volts, and R is the resistance of the conductor in units of ohms. More specifically, Ohm’s law states that the R in this relation is constant, independent of the current.
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!
Here are the stickers of the Adafruit skill badges, coming “hot off the press”! We’ll have them in store very soon
In the second video you can see a fun production innovation, the barcodes for our inventory system are printed on the non-used portion of the sticker. This makes it super easy to add to stock, track and make sure there are not any shipping issues since we scan each item before we ship it!
On a related note, all our stickers and badges are made in the USA. And the power used for the sticker and embroidered machines are from solar power. We’ll be posting more details like this soon, but when you’re considering buying things from the various companies out there we hope these little details like solar powered and where things are made helps make the decision.
The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market.
Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain—intentionally so—to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom.
At the free online-education provider Khan Academy, for instance, students get a “Great Listener” badge for watching 30 minutes of videos from its collection of thousands of short educational clips. With enough of those badges, paired with badges earned for passing standardized tests administered on the site, users can earn the distinction of “Master of Algebra” or other “Challenge Patches.”
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.
My girlfriend got me a “man-bag” a.k.a “geek-bag” for Christmas which I pretty much already knew and she is -teh AWESOME- for …. But, what I didn’t know was that she was being sneaky and had been watching me geek out over the patches in the adafruit shop one evening and decided to get me some for Christmas to go with the bag. She said she got the ones that she knew what it was and knew I had “earned” hehe, she also wanted to get me the magic blue smoke monster since she has witnessed on a few occasions some… “complications” …at my work bench, but alas, it was out of stock at the time… Anyway, Thank you Ladyada and adabot for having these awesome patches for all us maker-geeks!
Coming soon glow-in-the-dark “Radiation” badge. You learned about radiation and radioactivity! 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. This is the “Radioactivity and Radiation” badge for use at classrooms, workshops, Maker Faires, Hackerspaces, TechShops and around the world to reward beginners on their skill building journey! This special badge is white in the day time and glows green in the dark.
Should be in stock in a week or so! You can check out all the badges here and here.
The folks at lahack.com have created a custom badge wall generator for showing off your hacking and making skills on the internet(s). If you want to save the image after you’ve generated it, click ‘view image’, and then save it as a jpeg (your browser might want to save it as a .php file, just change php to jpg).
Thanks, lahack.com!
Of course, if you really want to really wear your skills on your sleeve, you can check out the badges in the shop!
Printable catalog (PDF)
We’re really excited to see all the “merit badge” efforts and we’re curious where it will go. We’ll have our beta for our online version up soon, we have some testers now and we’ll be able to share the live system very soon!
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