I Want One!

An Origami Wheel Robot

Some Really Neat JavaScript Graphics

Particle Physics Demo

Source code is also available here.

And some additional demo's

.

Mobile Robotics with Scratch: The Whole Truth About the Integration of Scratch, Arduino and Bluetooth

This is a nicely done article by Aldo von Wangenheim

and well worth the read

Reference Manual

 for 

s2a_fm

Has Been Translated To Chinese!!!

Thanks to Yufangjun 发自我的小米手机  for the translation. It can be found on Github.

3D Game Programming for Kids

by

Chris Strom

When teaching programming to Middle School students (ages 10-14), it is essential to keep the lessons interactive, visually engaging, and intellectually challenging. “3D Game Programming for Kids”, by Chris Strom fulfills all these requirements, and then some!

I was curious to see if the students in my Scratch programming club, would be interested in learning JavaScript 3D programming next year, so using this book, I developed a test lesson to get their reactions. The students are a mix of hardcore "gamers", and those that just love to use computing to express their creativity. The lesson was hands-on and the students got a chance to create 3D objects using the wonderful online editor that the author provides.  At the end of the session,  I polled the students for their reactions to see if they would want to continue in the fall, and the answer was a unanimous, "Please offer this!!". 

So, I am now busy putting together lesson plans, all the while having a great time. The book is well written, and it not only focuses on creating 3D graphics, but quietly teaches solid programming principles. It even includes a section on debugging! For me, what is really compelling about this book, is that the reader is never bogged down in abstract concepts or nomenclature, but is just having a great time without realizing that there is a lot of heavy duty learning going on.

If you know of a kid (of any age) who would like to learn JavaScript, this is the book to buy!

I give this book 5 Stars *****

A Mini Book Review of

A Smarter Way To Learn JavaScript

by Mark Meyers

If you want to get up to speed with JavaScript quickly and easily, this book will get you there. The author's technique is to use short sections of text and then reinforce the material with on-line practice exercises. This technique is very effective.

My only complaint with the book, is that in the later chapters, it assumes that the reader is pretty familiar with HMTL, CSS and DOM. In all fairness to the author, DOM is covered very nicely towards the end of the book.  If you are inexperienced in web page creation, you may wish to get up to speed on HTML and CSS before tackling the later chapters.

You can purchase the book here.

I give this book 5 out 5 stars!

Learn How To Wirelessly Control an Arduino Using the BeagleBone Black
or
Raspberry Pi

Check out my latest Instructables Article

Please note that some corrections have been made to Step 2. The bluez package is required to be installed into the BBB.

Article has been updated to include Raspberry Pi running the latest Debian Wheezy (2014-06-20) release.