"arlier this year, Microsoft released a Community Technical Preview (CTP) of its robot-programming SDK, called "Microsoft Robotics Studio," the result of work done by one of the groups emerging from Microsoft Research. Robotics Studio provides a high-level generic interface for programming a wide range of robots using a distributed model. The utility of this approach is apparent by the fact that both hobbyists controlling robotic kits or toy robots and serious roboticists controlling large and complicated robots can use the same SDK. This article presents an overview of Robotics Studio, and then shows you how to use the SDK to program the iRobot Roomba vacuum robot."
"ROBOTC is the premiere robotics programming language for educational robotics and competitions. ROBOTC is a C-Based Programming Language with an Easy-to-Use Development Environment."
Program by Design is an innovative project for computing education that combines motivation with principles. On the surface we use engaging contexts-our "hello world" program is an animation, and students have the opportunity to program games, mashups, phones, etc.-while teaching a principled and scalable approach to computing.
"Useful robot algorithms in both pseudocode and source code. Because programming is a very huge subject and there are billions of books and tutorials on how to program already written, all I plan to cover is specifically what is important to programming robots not mentioned in common literature."
Bootstrap is a standards-based curriculum for middle- and high-school students, which teaches them to program their own videogames using purely algebraic and geometric concepts. We work with schools and teachers to integrate Bootstrap into their algebra classes and technology programs, as well as parents and afterschool programs across the country.
"A social justice technology program for girls
CompuGirls is one of a few programs in the nation to combine culturally relevant teaching, social justice and technology. It provides girls access to technology and the internet they might not have otherwise, as well as peer support, which makes learning easier.
CompuGirls is a culturally relevant technology program for adolescent (grades 8-12) girls from under-resourced school districts in the Greater Phoenix area and soon in Colorado. Supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, CompuGirls provides fun summer and after-school classes where participants learn the latest technologies in digital media, games, and virtual worlds and become a voice for social justice and change in the world."
With Phrogram, you can learn the experience of programming using a development environment that is similar to what working programmers use to write, test and debug their software programs.
"Etoys is . . .
an educational tool for teaching children powerful ideas in compelling ways
a media-rich authoring environment and visual programming system
a free software program that works on almost all personal computers"
Crunchzilla is a fun way for all students to learn how to painlessly write JavaScript programs. It offers three different interactive tutorials where kids and adults can play with code, experiment, build, and learn. Code Monster is for younger children, ages 9-14, and for curious adults. Code Monster is the easiest tutorial. Code Maven is for ages 13 and up and is harder than Code Monster with more difficult problems, more depth, and more explanation. Game Maven is for adults and older teens who have some programming experience. Game Maven is a step-by-step tutorial for writing three different video games.
The Hour of Code features great resources for ages 6 to 100 to learn how to create simple or complex programs, beginning with drag-and-drop programming.
This curriculum guide is designed as a supplemental resource to the Final Cut
Studio Certification materials. The 16 lessons included here are linked to either
content area standards or skill set competencies and are meant to be taught during
a traditional 18-week semester. This guide also provides the resources to align a
moviemaking/editing class to a Regional Occupational Program (ROP) or Perkinsfunded school-to-career program.
Free! THINKING WORLDS is a drag-and-drop 3D scene builder and visual programming editor that allows non-coders to build immersive gaming experiences and simulations. It appears more suited for creating virtual training exercises in large organizations, but with a free developer license it should provide a sufficient challenge for the ultra-techie educator. Beware. This is more of a summer project than weekend quick pick -- just imagine the learning curve if there were Scratch controls for every movement in Sim City. But if you're up to the task, there's still time to join this recently started MOOC on gameification. After all, a tool is only as good as the outcomes it makes possible.
"Tynker is a new computing platform designed specifically to teach children computational learning and programming skills in a fun and imaginative way. Tynker is inspired by Scratch from MIT. It is a completely browser-based implementation written using Open Web standards such as Javascript, HTML5, CSS3 and does not use Flash."