Learning Links

	The Origin of Everything YouTube Channel from PBS investigates the “why” behind many aspects of everyday life. The fun videos are perfect for your most curious students, or for getting students excited about learning on their own. Video topics range from history (Why is there a South and North Korea?) to pop culture (Where does the #Hashtag come from?).
	Quizlet Diagrams help students see what they're learning in a whole new way. Whether you're studying human anatomy or national geography, this new feature makes studying a lot more fun. Create custom diagrams, or choose from Quizlet's premade sets.

Getting started guide for teachers, https://quizlet.com/help/2444126/how-teachers-can-use-quizlet

Sadly, Quizlet is not free. Get a free period of 14-days, then pay for the year. I won't be paying. 

Thinking more about Tech Captains

Software Freedom Day is September 16, 2017

http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2017

If you'd like to get your schools or students involved in a project to help promote Open Source software, Software Freedom Day is a great opportunity.  Think about putting together a small local event for Software Freedom Day in your area and adding it to the SFD site.

How are you planning to support Software Freedom Day in your local area?  Hope you'll join in and help celebrate.

Sports App development article

http://www.mindinventory.com/blog/why-mobile-apps-becoming-necessity-for-sports-industry/

Who wants to be the Pittsburgh voice for this open source utility?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jen Caltrider, Mozilla
Subject: I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

A whole new way your voice matters.

Dear Pittsburgh Yinzers, We all sound different when we speak. What does that mean for voice recognition? When Siri hears a beautiful Irish brogue or Scottish burr or the accent of a non-native English speaker, she can get tripped up. And Siri has the full force of Apple's voice data collection operation behind her algorithm to help her understand. What about the small developer who wants to build a voice activated app? Where do they go to get samples of all the beautiful voices speaking from around the world? Up until recently, their options were to spend a fortune buying data to train their algorithms from big corporations or put their product out into the world with an untrained algorithm. It's time for a better option. Meet Mozilla's new project, Common Voice. It's an open collection of labelled voice data anyone can use to create highly accurate voice recognition software. Well, it will soon be that, with your help. In order to create this valuable public resource, we need people who speak English in all sorts of wonderful ways to go and contribute voice samples. (Note: right now Common Voice is only collecting English samples, but stay tuned, we plan to add other languages very soon.) Here's what you do — click over to the Common Voice website. There are two ways you can help. You can click "Speak" and follow the instructions to leave some of your own voice samples. You'll be asked to allow the website to access your microphone. Don't worry, we're Mozilla, we care about your privacy and won't use your microphone for anything but recording the short sentences you'll read. Have fun playing around with that. I know I did. If leaving a voice recording isn't your thing, you can also just listen. Click the "Listen" link and you'll be asked to listen to some sentences others have read and verify they got it right. That's it. It's actually a ton of fun. As voice recognition becomes more important in our digital world, everyone — from startups to students at university to that friend of yours who just likes to tinker — should be able to make sure their apps recognize all our beautiful voices. That's how we build a healthy Internet, one step at a time. Thank you, Jen Caltrider Mozilla Thanks for reading! You're receiving this email because we think you're neat. Donate to Mozilla   |   Download Firefox 331 E. Evelyn Avenue Mountain View CA 94041 Legal • Privacy

Online Travel Guide for Journalists (ebook)

The Committee to Protect Journalists aims to share this resource. This is not an easy time for journalists all over the world, with the discoveries of surveillance on citizens, which includes journalists and their sources.

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/online-privacy-journalists/

macSVG

macSVG is a MIT-licensed <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License> open-source macOS application for designing and editing Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content for HTML5 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5> web pages, mobile apps, animation design, and general graphics usage.


very nice.

http://macsvg.org <http://macsvg.org/>

Fwd: What Can YOU Build With LiveCode?

---------- Forwarded

What Can YOU Build With LiveCode? Hi Mark, I'd like to share with you three very different examples of what our customers have achieved with LiveCode. Join us and you can start building your own great apps! 3000 Malaysian School Children Learn Programming Fadillah Iskandar is the lead trainer and content developer for the Coding@Schools program, a government funded initiative aimed at introducing primary school children in Malaysia into the world of computing and programming, to encourage them to become contributors to and creators of the Internet rather than mere consumers. Fadillah told us "As a trainer, I am very excited about introducing young students to computer programming. Instead of just playing with games and apps, students get to go behind the screen and create their own website and apps. I hope this will spark their interest and give them a foothold in the programming world." She goes on to describe the National Code Challenge "25 teams with 133 students from all over the country were placed under one roof in Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC). It was an overwhelming atmosphere to see young people working together to refine their projects and doing their best to make it happen. Nothing beats seeing them confidently pitch their ideas and present their prototypes built on LiveCode!" "The event was even more special and memorable when our Prime Minister himself presented the prizes to the winners. I am sure this momentous occasion meeting the Prime Minister will be forever remembered by the participants of NCC." Read the full interview here. LiveCode is used in schools in many countries around the world, including here in my home country of Scotland where 1/3 of the schools now teach with it and report an impressive doubling of uptake for computer science. Halo Co-Creator Chooses LiveCode to Create Graphic Novel Experience Bungie co-founder and former head of game development at Disney Interactive Alex Seropian has embarked on a new adventure. Industrial Toys, based in Los Angeles, is focused on creating games for core gamers on mobile. The team features Tim Harris (formerly of Seven Lights) as its president, together with talent formerly from Marvel and DC Comics. Midnight Rises is an interactive graphic novel that allows you to explore their game world and interact deeply with the characters. It's an incredibly rich experience, featuring parallax animation, choices of paths to follow, objects to find and some fascinating background on the characters. Tim told us that "LiveCode was really easy-to-use. It gave us the speed to market we needed. And most importantly, it let us make something really robust. This is such an incredibly rich world we're creating and we needed to be able to do a lot to get the interactivity right. We were able to do all the things we wanted to do. Signup, profiles, server calls, analytics, transferring states, in app purchases, there is so much going on inside the app." He went on to explain that LiveCode allowed Alex to write the app. "We have a team of world class engineers across the room working on the 3D shooter and we have Alex [Seropian] making this graphic novel. He's a world class game designer. He really appreciated having such an easy-to-use tool to create the gameplay quickly and do all the things we wanted to do." Summing up their experience with LiveCode, Tim said "Everything has turned out nice and smooth. We couldn't be happier." Read the full interview here. University Management System for University of Vienna With 91,000 students and 9400 employees, Vienna University is the largest in central Europe. They required a robust and fit for purpose management system to address the day to day running of this thriving learning environment and chose LiveCode. Every single aspect of functioning for the entire university is included in the system. A few of the functions include: - A scheduler for course timetables - A room allocation system - The enrollment details for every student - Staff Payroll We spoke to Hartmut Eich, from the software development team at the University about their choice of LiveCode. Hartmut told us "The project originated as a system for the creation of a database-based applications. One of the key features of the system is the way that the data and the code is stored in the database itself. The database stores all of its own meta-structure – a description of the table structure, together with the relationships between the tables, along with all the code for the user interface." "LiveCode was an ideal choice for this project for many reasons. At the heart of the system is an augmented version of SQL that ties SQL together with the LiveCode language model. This is essentially a domain-specific language, tailored to fully support the needs of this application." "The design of the system makes it easy for a team to work on the project. Each module is completely independent and stored in the Oracle database. This makes it straightforward to work on it in parallel." Read more here. What will you build? Join us today. Kind regards, Kevin PS. There are just 2 days left to take advantage of your exclusive offer. Don't miss out - get it now. Copyright © 2017 LiveCode Ltd, All rights reserved. You joined this list upon creating an account and confirming your email address at LiveCode.com. Our mailing address is: LiveCode Ltd 25A Thistle St South West Lane Edinburgh, EH2 1EW United Kingdom Add us to your address book

Screenagers

LiveCode 8.1 Released: Fast Networking and sFTP Support

8.1 is available now and has a ton of great new features for you. View this email in your browser 8.1: A Major Minor Feature Release We are delighted to announce the release of LiveCode 8.1. As the first significant release post 8.0, it has a raft of important new features for you as well as refinements, enhancements and the usual herculean bug squishing efforts. New Networking Layer This release brings you a vast improvement in the networking speed and capabilities of LiveCode. The new tsNet networking layer, included in LiveCode Indy and LiveCode Business, can speed up networking operations anywhere between 3x and 250x, depending on the type of operation. As it wraps the existing networking commands you will not need to rewrite any code, you will automatically benefit from this improvement. The new layer also adds support for additional protocols such as sFTP, SMTP and TLS. For full details please go here. Auto include inclusions Have you ever had the experience that your app works perfectly when running in the IDE, but when you build the final standalone it suddenly stops working? Was it because you forgot to include some vital component that your app needed to run? If so, you are not alone. 8.1 to the rescue. It now automatically searches for and includes any extensions or libraries your app needs. Read more about this new feature here. Goodbye Quicktime Also in this release, for multimedia playback, the Player Object has been replaced by a new player object using Directshow instead of Quicktime. Dependency on Quicktime is removed by this new player. Read more here. LCB Enhancements The Infinite LiveCode project has made good progress, with consequent enhancements to LiveCode Builder. Variables now get initialised by default, unsafe blocks and handlers can be used to flag sections of code that do dangerous things, and you can even include raw bytecode if necessary. Love for the IDE The IDE has lots of other upgrades, too: a keyboard-navigable Project Browser that highlights any scripts that failed to compile, a beautified dictionary user interface, and access to the message box just by starting to type. It even colorises your script as you type. New Extension Added You can now access HealthKit on iOS to integrate activity, sport and health data on iOS devices (requires an Indy or Business license). Additionally, the SVG widget has new scaled width and height properties, and the Line Graph widget now supports a scatter plot of data and a variety of new styles. And Even More There are dozens of other smaller features added in this version, explore the release notes for an exhaustive list. Worth checking out: GPS location history system for Android and iOS list files and folders without changing the current folder "filter" now works on arrays extended new "return" syntax lets you write functions & commands that set "it" appropriate resize cursors now show when dragging to change stack size  Fixes and enhancements 157 specific fixes and enhancements were made between LiveCode 8.0.2 and 8.1. Since the release of 8.0 a grand total of 220 bugs have been fixed, leading to a better, smoother, happier coding experience. This release is now available from your LiveCode account, or you can download here.  Read More Share Tweet Share Forward

Peter Reid, of the UK with nearly 20 years of LiveCode experiences calls LiveCode – The Coders' Swiss-Army-Knife

He posts: I have used LiveCode to develop a range of apps such as demonstrators, simulations, prototypes, mock-ups, document generators, data capture, data conversion, data analysis, data manipulation, data display, training course and various ad hoc tools.

LiveCode (Revolution, MetaCard) has proved effective for wide range of uses. Developing in LiveCode is quick and is rewarding to use, both in terms of finances and fun!

Old code from years ago can be reactivated and updated, proving that LiveCode stands the test of time!

Is it “perfect?"

No, as they say “Pobody’s Nerfect," but it’s highly usable and getting better over time.

http://www.reid-it.co.uk/downloads/downlc-images.htm

Download a set of slides presented at the LiveCode 2016 Conference about his experience of using LiveCode, together with a little app (including source code) from: http://www.reid-it.co.uk/downloads/downlc.htm

Debate recap

Another FB post had this gem:

Marco Rubio puts forth that Vladimir Putin is just an organized crime thug who is controlling a 6 trillion dollar economy which is a disaster, but is putting a trillion dollars into his military which will surely bankrupt Russia; 15 minutes after he complained that the US economy is a disaster and by the way, we need to increase military spending by a trillion dollars.

Ba-Dow!
... and the hits just keep on a'comin'...

My point about the hawk, Marco Rubio, is that he should not be POTUS (President of the United States).

Marko Rubio for Union Boss of the Zen of Aimless Welding. As a back-up, he can be CEO of Candy Crush.

Help with the Digital Badges covering Water Polo Knowledge. You can submit a test question using this form.

Staff members for our Summer Dreamers, past and present, should submit a question or three.

Be sure to scroll down on the right side to see and click on the blue submit button below the digital badge when completed. Then you'll be able to input another question as well.

Tiny link to above form: http://tinyurl.com/okg33j9. Feel free to copy-and-paste that URL and send it to your friends.

Tech Captains didn't get funded, yet

A few weeks ago I sent in a grant proposal to the Neighborhood Learning Alliance, and it didn't get funded. It was seeking $8,000 for the start-up of a new afterschool program in a local high school in Pittsburgh Public Schools. It was to help with academics and long-term success for the students as they got to college.

My plan called for a computer club of sorts called, Tech Captains. It would seek to get a few kids from all the sports teams, clubs and activities in the school so that they could make software and apps to better help them in their activities. For example, a few on the basketball team could do a stats sheet and playbook for the basketball team's use. So on for drama or band or helping with our summer camp and water polo conditioning routines.

See the proposal in a PDF:

http://tinyurl.com/k2zhkqf

A slide show about the plan is also available:

---

Well, this didn't get funded, yet, sadly.

Now, what to do?

LiveCode User Group starting in Pittsburgh, Feb 24

Western Pennsylvania LiveCode User Group is calling its first meeting for 6 pm on Tuesday, February 24, 2015, at Carnegie Mellon University's Modern Language Resource Center, Room 225c Baker Porter Hall. All those in and around Pittsburgh with experiences or an interest in the multi-platform, open source, software LiveCode (http://www.LiveCode.com) are invited to attend the organizational meeting. Our meet and greet starts with pizza and includes a 20-to-30 minute presentation and demo from Marc Siskin of CMU on how he converts his LiveCode content into mobile apps that run on both iOS and Android devices.

If you have any interest in the group, attend the meeting or else email msiskin@edvista.com or call 412-401-5623 as monthly meetings are expected.

Democracy fixture, Netgain Challenge

http://bit.ly/netgainchallenge

They are engaging the wider community on the agenda-setting side.

They ask for example:

    How can technology make democracies more participatory and responsive?

Topics:

• ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE
• BIG DATA
• CENSORSHIP
• DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION
• ENVIRONMENTALISM
• GOVERNANCE
• INEQUALITY
• NETWORKS
• ORGANIZING
• PRIVACY
• PROPAGANDA
• PUBLIC INTEREST TECHNOLOGY
• SECURE COMMUNICATIONS
• SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• SURVEILLANCE

Open Data Day Mico Grants

OPEN DATA DAY 2015 is coming and a coalition of partners have come
together to provide a limited number of micro-grants designed to
support communities organise ODD activities all over the world !

All the details from the Open Knowledge Foundation:

http://bit.ly/opendatadaymicrogrants
More ...

Here are the emerging events:

http://wiki.opendataday.org/Main_Page

If you want to get involved, join their online group:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-data-day

Also note Code Across events as well:

http://www.codeforamerica.org/events/codeacross-2015/

You need to check with wiki, map and the Code Across list to see what
is emerging this is as OKF puts it "As a volunteer led event, with no
organisation behind it, Open Data Day provides the perfect opportunity
for communities all over the world to convene, celebrate and promote
open data in ways most relevant to their fellow citizens."

See the 2014 sheet for events from last year too - starting one in
your city with other who did this before is worth at try:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ruewy74XVCCyp89YzqsyeoKTjLmyzNHo0hrjr3djiyQ/edit?usp=sharing

Lastly, as part of the Coalition supporting this effort with some
in-kind promotion, note our tips on digital outreach for unconferences
and hackathons. If set up an event, these very tactical tips will help
to get people in the room!

http://e-democracy.org/digout

Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy

* Support E-Democracy. Pledge drive to raise $10,000 US:
http://e-democracy.org/donate?ft - Only $890 to 2015 Goal

Proposal slide show for the creation of Tech Captains, a school-based computer programming club

BC swimming workout videos and photos

Insight Timer App by Brad