What if you’ve never stepped foot in a computer science class, but you want your child to know how to code? It can be difficult to pass along information you don’t have yourself. Luckily, No Starch has published a set of Scratch Coding Cards to help anyone get started with MIT’s coding site.
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While I accepted that getting to Hogwarts, Narnia, or Middle Earth may prove impossible, the next best thing would be to get a little agency as a character in said story and get to influence the course of events. Enter interactive fiction, which places the player firmly in the middle of the story.
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Everyone with a heart beating in their chest (and likely some robots who do not have a heart beating in their chest) loves the idea of receiving or sending a secret message knowing no one except the recipient can read its contents, preferably under the blankets, after bedtime, with a flashlight.
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The app requires users to be 13 or older, so I’ve been using the exercises in the book with the kids. She writes about collecting and using power-ups during your day, fighting bad guys, and going on quests. And because everything ties into video games, my kids have been able to easily make the jump from how they feel playing a game on their iPod to recreating that feeling in the real world.
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In ‘Machinations,’ you play as a robot, created by an inventor of your choosing, who is serving the merchant-king (or queen!) and doing his/her bidding. It’s a kingdom tottering on the edge of war, and your actions will either help or hinder the people of the land. Sneak into a neighboring ruler’s castle, diffuse a tense situation amongst workers at the docks, and chase a shopkeeper who is holding answers to a puzzle across the rooftops.
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I am always looking for games I can play together with my kids, so I was especially excited about ‘Heroes Guard’ because it strikes a fantastic balance between story and luck. It’s one thing to make a choice in a game. It’s quite another to make a choice and then have to roll a die to see if you’re successful. We all started holding our breath every time the die flashed on the screen.
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Rick Kelly had a computer science degree, a strong background in C++, and a great job working on Elder Scrolls Online with ZeniMax… and a little game idea he was tossing around in his head. Here’s how he ventured out on his own to create that game.
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You begin with three beakers, each containing two green marbles, two red marbles, and two purple marbles. You then flip over a card and have to make the marbles in your beakers match the picture on the card. But it’s harder than it sounds…
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Back in the 70s, ‘Free to Be You and Me,’ an exploration of gender equality, pointed out why William should have a doll. Those very same children raised on the songs of Marlo Thomas grew up to lead toy companies that segregated play by sex or gender.
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“A Kickstarter campaign is a massive undertaking, and I could not have done [it] without some serious advice and emotional support from about twenty [or] so developers and previous Kickstarter campaigners. It’s hard to put into a couple sentences everything that went into it, but I can tell you that it included about a month of research and a month of design and development.”
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One of the nicest parts of Scratch is its social component: kids can tell other kids what they liked about their projects.
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I don’t know what happened to the 16-year-old version of me that was dying to pop the hood and figure it all out. All I know is that her interest not only fizzled but turned to fear.
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Welcome to WordsEye, currently in beta, where you can turn your words into images by the simple act of description. Open a new project and start typing, almost as you would if you were writing a story. Except that instead of leaving the words on the screen for the reader to translate into an image inside their mind, WordsEye takes the extra step to turn those words into a picture–one that is printable and sharable in high definition.
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In James Floyd Kelly’s new book, ‘Digital Engineering with Minecraft,’ you’ll learn how to do 3D modeling and import those models into ‘Minecraft,’ make mazes to bring into the game, and even take creations from your real world and incorporate them into the ‘Minecraft’ world.
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And… there are so few times in life when you can “go home,” when you can reaccess a time period and feel like you did the first time you encountered the games. That’s how I feel playing the Intellivision Flashback. I feel like I get to go back to my childhood home.
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We were talking about easter eggs, which obviously brought up Adventure, the first video game (that I know of) to contain an easter egg. “I play it sometimes,” she admitted. How did she play it sometimes? She didn’t have her childhood Atari anymore.
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When you work out of the house, it can be difficult to separate work time from play time, especially when work and play use the same tools. At the heart of this conundrum is the computer. If I’m sitting in front of it, I get the feeling that I should be working. Sure, I use it to surf the web and read blogs and check Twitter. But mostly, I’m working.
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The twins and I usually set a theme for our summer. This year, we’re having a summer of mystery. We’ve dusted off my dad’s old copies of Sherlock Holmes, downloaded a few podcasts, and found some games to play on the app store. Want to join along?
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Though I’m partial to Welcome to ‘Night Vale’ or the ‘Nerdist’ podcast, I’ve been listening instead to Adam Cadre’s new ‘Radio K’ podcast, an hour discussion about interactive fiction. My only complaint is that there are only two episodes currently in the queue, so I’m anxiously awaiting for Cadre to make more.
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I don’t really want to tell you any part of the story because part of the joy is finding each clue on your own, but I can tell you that if you can’t get to the beach, spending a half hour with ‘A Sailor’s Dream’ is the next best thing. It will make your heart ache while it simultaneously makes you hopeful that there are still gorgeous, unique games to be made.
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Part of the allure is the fact that you have access to hundreds of games you don’t own, which means that they’re all new and exciting. The other allure is that you’re out and about, eating junk food while discovering that Professor Plum did it in the dining room with the candlestick. But it would be easy enough to recreate the board game cafe with friends for free (or, at least, less than the $20 rate per 4 people).
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Stan Lee is teaming up with the Smithsonian to teach an online class this May called The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact on Pop Culture. Am I signed up? Uh… hells yeah.
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I chose this game because I was immediately struck by its nod to the early text adventures, especially bringing in the sense of humor that permeated games such as Zork. I also realized on my first play-through that the map was very very easy to draw. This isn’t always the case. As someone who has been spoiled by Infocom’s maps, being able to draw the map easily is very important to me.
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So I want to start a monthly computer club where we all play the same game at the same time. Bookmark the post at the beginning of the month and then start talking in the comment thread. What do you like about the game? What do you dislike? Where are you stuck? Has anyone figured out how to get the dart out of the bar? What about kill the troll? Get the shield?
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I’ve fallen in love with a book. Like fallen head-over-heels, carry-it-all-around-town, sneak-in-pages-whenever-I-can in love. The real deal.
The book that is the object of my affection?
Uh… it’s Nick Morgan’s Javascript for Kids.
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A few years ago, we dreamed up our own December tradition: Rings Day. Starting on the 25th and running until the 31st, we watch all three Lord of the Rings films back-to-back. We start at Bilbo’s 111th birthday party and try to get Frodo’s trip to Valinor to unfold on New Year’s Eve. It gives the kids our own December tradition to look forward to and occupies us when all the stores and restaurants are closed and our friends are ensconced in Christmas activities.
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To solve my spelling problem, my father brought home an Infocom game called Zork. He explained how it worked. I would be placed inside a story, much like my Choose Your Adventure Books, only this time, instead of being contained to two choices, I would have open possibilities. The only catch was that I needed to spell things correctly in order to have the game recognize my commands. It only took a single night to fall in love with the underground world of Zork; fall in love enough to learn how to spell in order to explore.
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My son is nine, and very familiar with Scratch, so I’ll start by saying that this app is most helpful for a younger child, perhaps kindergarten age, who hasn’t had experience with drag-and-drop programming yet. While three games came with my app preview — Puppy Adventure, Lost in Space, and Sketch Racer — only the first game comes for free on the downloadable app, with in-app purchases providing more games for the player at around $2 per game.
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Months ago, I started sending out what I call a canary-in-a-coal mine email when it comes to Kickstarter. People are asking me for money, and if they are, they better take the time to be accessible. If they don’t have the time or energy to deal with the outreach necessary to raise funding for a project, they probably shouldn’t undertake the project at that time. And frankly, with the fact that there is little recourse if the project isn’t delivered after raising the money, it behooves investors to do some research into what sort of developers they’re funding beyond the basics of the project: are they reliable, accessible, and most importantly, will they have the emotional bandwidth to see the project through to its end?
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Each day, when I returned to the school like the Pied Piper of Circuits to lead another round of workshops, more and more kids started gathering at the computer lab door. I think that’s a sign of how interested kids are to keep exploring STEM fields. I had a fifth grader who told me at the beginning of the workshop that she didn’t really like computers who informed me later that she’s now thinking about studying computer science. I think that’s an hour well spent. After all, there are going to be 1.2 million new jobs in STEM fields in 2018. Who is going to fill them if we don’t raise the next generation with that information?
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