Free ‘Teach Kids to Code’ PDF and an Amazing Contest!
DK has an amazing sweepstakes going on right now through December 13, 2016, giving away a coding library that consists of seven coding books and workbooks.
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Category: Software
Upgrade Your Old Car With the Latest Tech
Don’t despair that you’re stuck with last-gen tech on your old vehicle. With a quick shopping trip and a few minutes of plugging things in, you can give your car major upgrades.
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Step Aside, Lemonade Stand: Here Comes ‘Pizza Co.’
Osmo has been blurring the boundary between digital and physical play with its app sets for spelling, math, and programming. Its latest set tackles running a business.
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Kickstarter Alert: ‘Pathfinder’ ‘Playbook Essentials’ for Android
Trapdoor Technologies is running a Kickstarter to bring the best of ‘Playbook for Pathfinder’ to the Android platform. The ‘Playbook Essentials’ for Android Kickstarter focuses on the Library Module and character sheets.
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Ever App Wants to Be Your Ultimate Free Photo Back-up/Sharing/Editing/Everything Tool (Sponsored)
Ever is the app that takes care of everything you need, photo-wise. It’ll back them up from everywhere you save them, it’ll organize them, let you edit them, and share them, too. And it’s free! Check out more about Ever…
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New Kickstarter — Coding and Hardware for Spy Kids!
I’m always on the lookout for new tools to help with my summer tech camps, and the folks over at Dexter Industries may very well have a hit on their hands with their new Kickstarter, Spy vs sPi.
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Stencil Enhances Digital Creativity
The new Stencil tool for the Morpholio Trace app allows users to create their own collection of graphics for drawings from any image.
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‘GameMaker’ Humble Bundle Is a Massively Good Deal
If you’ve been dreaming about making a game, as a hobby or new career, the ‘GameMaker’ Humble Bundle is packed full of development riches at a near-unbelievable price.
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‘Hey Monster!’ Uses Your Child’s Creativity to Teach Early Literacy
TechSpaghetti’s latest app, ‘Hey Monster!,’ harnesses your child’s imagination in order to teach them basic English sight words.
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3 Ways the Internet of Things Is Changing Global Shipping (Sponsored)
American International Group, the global insurance provider with a passion for the Internet of Things (IoT), continues its work studying the impact of the IoT on companies across all industries. Here are three ways the IoT is changing the world’s shipping industry.
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Vellum: Making Ebook Creation Intuitive
Vellum.pub is a fast, simple way to create an ebook. But only if you own a Mac.
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Streamline Your Game Nights With ‘Playbook for Pathfinder’
‘Playbook for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game’ by Trapdoor Technologies is an iPad app that “integrates all of the components of running the popular RPG into a single application.”
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GeekDad Draws: T-Shirt Art With ‘Krita’
A while ago, I received a graphic tablet as present and immediately started playing around with it. As a big fan of Open Source software, I turned to ‘GIMP’ rather than ‘Photoshop.’ When looking around on the internet for tips and tricks about working with the graphic tablet, I soon stumbled over ‘Krita,’ another Open Source project, which has gained momentum lately.
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Roll20 Virtual Tabletop Licensed to Provide ‘D&D’ Content
Roll20 has signed a licensing deal with Wizards of the Coast to provide ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ content for the platform.
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‘Pokémon GO’ the Future of Augmented Reality?
Is ‘Pokémon GO’ an augmented reality failure? Or could it be opening the door for a whole new understanding of AR?
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Let’s Start Coding: The Next Step in Maker Education
Keep your older kids busy this summer by getting hands-on with making and coding an array of projects with kits from Let’s Start Coding.
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Kickstarter Alert: ‘Marvelous Machines’ Augmented Reality Children’s Book Comes to Life (Sponsored)
Check out this great Kickstarter project bringing the wonder of augmented reality to children’s books.
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Logarithm Sleuth ‘The CS Detective’ Excerpt
Our friends at No Starch Press are doing something a little different with their latest offering–‘The CS Detective.’ The first half of this novel by Jeremy Kubica will be serialized as free downloadables.
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Take ‘Monsters Everywhere!’ on Your Android or iOS Device
‘Monsters Everywhere!’ is more than a hotel-building simulator. It’s a detective hunt and social media travelogue now available for Android and iOS devices.
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‘The Adventures of Pan’ Brings Its Epic Conclusion to iPad and iPhone
There are multiple hours of enjoyment to be had with this interactive story, but some of that enjoyment is undermined at times by lack of clarity in how the young user is expected to interact with the elements in particular scenes.
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Can Viv Live Up to the Hype?
Soon we will meet Viv, an AI personal assistant that can write its own code, taking on new tasks based on interaction with the things connected to it.
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Rukkus Gets You the Best Seat Virtually Every Time
The updated Rukkus iOS app features virtual reality seat views to allow users to fully experience their seat location first-hand before final purchases are made.
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Is Twitter Dying?
Lately, we have been toying with the idea of doing away with Twitter for business purposes. Not that we tweet hardcore sales info; typically we tweet about community involvement, tips, and news. However, the stats on our tweets have gone to numbers in the tens.
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Safeguard Your Communications With SafeSend
Have you ever accidentally sent an email to the wrong person? Be honest. We’ve all done it. I’ve definitely done it, more than once. Sometimes it can be harmless, generating nothing more than a benign miscommunication. But sometimes…
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Gamify My Game-Based Learning!
Gamified learning and game-based learning are terms that get thrown around all the time in education, with one often being conflated with the other. Here’s a short primer on the subject.
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‘Story Lab’ App Teaches Early Literacy Skills Through Multimedia Creation
The latest offering from TechSpaghetti uses music and games to teach early reading skills to young users.
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Send Your Kids to ‘Minecraft’ Summer Camp at Home!
The Connected Camps Summer ‘Minecraft’ Camp is perfect for kids who want to get more out of their ‘Minecraft’ experience. And we have a special GeekDad offer to make it even better!
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'Computer Coding' — Programming for Young Coders Part II
A few weeks back I wrote about a new book from DK Publishing that introduces programming concepts and the Scratch programming language. I reached out to DK to see if they had any other books related to programming, and they just sent me a copy of ‘Computer Coding: An Introduction to Computer Programming.’
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'Coding in Scratch: Games Workbook' — Programming for Young Coders
Since teaching some basic programming camps over the last two summers, I’ve had requests from parents of younger children for a similar type of camp, but it won’t be happening in 2016. That said, in order to even consider the request, I’ve been examining various apps and books to see just how I might go about introducing programming concepts to a younger audience. I’ve been looking for something to recommend to parents as a simple way to gauge the interest of a child in programming without being overly complicated or lengthy. The solution I found came from DK Publishing.
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A Terraria Christmas Story: Hardmode Items from the North Pole
My 7-year-old son is really into an open-ended 2D sandbox game on his iPhone called Terraria. In fact, he is so into it that this Christmas season on the top of his list to Santa was “the best items in the game”. I honestly expressed to him my doubt that Santa could deliver, since most presents are made in the elves’ workshop, and that Terraria on the iPhone has no “creative mode” to add items at will. “No, daddy,” was the reply, “Santa can hack!” Oh yes, this was going to be interesting.
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