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An effort to engage kids in coding by getting tech and non-tech celebraties to discuss coding in an accessible way. Also, attempts to motivate  them to get into a career where they can work in a really cool office...

If everyone is learning to write code for the internet, will we see an explosion of new sites, apps, and even games?

An interesting post on games in education that links to many examples for learning to code and mentions some other online educational environments that use gamification.

Hi Stephanie - This article also seems to highlight the extrinsic rewards of points and badges -- calling it "gamification." And given our last conversation in class, I wonder if all the points and badges will kill the intrinsic desire to play the games. Interestingly, there was a comment with a link to another article http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/ where the writer notes that some games just use "pointification," and that the best games are the ones that have rich cognitive, emotional and social aspects, with choice and skill... but not dependent on points/badges. In light of our "motivation" conversations, it will be interesting to watch how gaming in the classroom plays out if they are largely point/badges driven.

Etherpad is a hosted web service that allows really real-time document collaboration for groups of users. Etherpad is open source; you can host your own Etherpad by downloading the source code or try Etherpad for free on one of the Public Sites.

What are the benefits and risks to teen online participation? Dr. Boyd immerses herself in youth communities and researches issues of race, gender, social networking, activism and more.

Interesting article and video about a new way of teaching children to program. A credit-card sized computer designed to help teach children to code has gone on sale for the first time. The Raspberry Pi is a bare-bones, low-cost computer created by volunteers mostly drawn from academia and the UK tech industry.

I just heard about this from a friend and then stumbled across your link - and then wound up on the Raspberry Pi website to try to find out more about the education component of it (which is supposedly the whole motivation). Right now, the website is focused on showcasing the capabilities of the device and the hardware/software choices that they made. I was disappointed to find, when looking through their FAQ, that there is only one small blurb about educational material in which they vaguely state that support resources are currently under development. No doubt they are allowing a greater number of people access to a cheap Linux machine, but that does not mean those people are going to use it to learn to program. I'll be interested to see if the focus really does shift to education as the resources come together... right now it just seems like a cool new toy for a Linux geek (with the potential to be so much more!)