3D Visualization game

http://www.uff.br/cdme/tomografia/tomografia-html/tomografia-en.html

This is a little game that might be a good intro to a lesson on 3D visualization for kids.

Common Craft videos explain aspects of computer tech

http://www.commoncraft.com/videos#technology

Here are a collection of videos that in simple language explain aspects of computer technology including blogs, twitter, wikis and more.

WatchKnow – Videos for kids to learn from

http://www.watchknow.org/Category.aspx?CategoryID=98

This site has organized over a thousand videos that kids can learn from. In particular they have a category for computers.

Mandelbulb – Some great 3D fractals

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

This page has some awesome 3D fractals. Some videos too.

An explanation of how they are created is given on http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html

History of the Internet in a Nutshell

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/

If you want to give some perspective on the history of the Internet, this is a very good page for some info on that.

Overview of how the Internet works

Here is a nice basic intro to how the Internet works. The presenter, Marti Hearst, is a professor at Cal Berkeley. The material should be suitable for high schoolers. The slides are also available http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is141/f05/lectures/se-course-intro.pdf

http://webcast.berkeley.edu:8080/ramgen/bibs/f2005/group3/sims141/20050829.rm?start=&end=

Some interesting Game Maker links

We are looking to teach Game Maker again this year. I did some more searching and found:

1. http://gm.destronmedia.com/?page_id=104&did=25 – The Beginers Guide To Game Maker 7.0 Programing

2. http://gm.destronmedia.com/?page_id=104&did=4 – Super Mario example game

3. http://digitalworlds.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/moving-on-with-game-maker-a-maze-game/ – ideas for adding to the example maze game

4. http://www.roencia.com/vidsgamemaker.html – lots of video tutorials for Gamemaker 7, includes code

5. http://www.pageflakes.com/ouseful/22238750 – a great page with lots of ideas for adding features to some common Game Maker examples like the Catch a Clown game, Maze Game and Platform Game

Free Video Analysis and Modeling Tool for Physics Education

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/

This might be more for physics classes but it is a good example of how you can do physics with a computer! Tracker Video looks like a great tool. Here’s a video on how to use it.

Here’s a paper on how to use it.

Modeling of physical systems with PyLab

PyLab_Works is a free and open source replacement for LabView + MatLab, written in pure Python. PyLab_Works is a visual design package, much easier to learn and to extend than LabView. PyLab_Works also supports a MatLab-like environment for doing scientific and engineering calculations but with a much better general programming environment (thanks to Python + Scipy) than MatLab. Even kids can use it!

It’s available at http://www.ohloh.net/p/pylab-works. Here’s a video about it

http://mientki.ruhosting.nl/movies/vp1.html

The part I like the best is where they use Python to simulate a pendulum. You can play with the parameters of the pendulum in the code. You can even change the way gravity works!

40+ Desert Island Web Development Tools

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/29/40-desert-island-web-development-tools/

Lots of free tools that could be used in the course of teaching kids about computers.