E-Learning for Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers: HTML5 Memory Game
These days, digital distractions are far too proficient at taking our attention away from important responsibilities. You know, like giving your children the care and attention they need and deserve. Especially when it comes to teaching and learning, I even find myself guilty of becoming quickly bored to tears of the typical paper flash word cards and basic, repetitive picture books for toddlers and pre-school aged children.
To fight this boredom, yet still fulfil my fatherly duties, I decided to put my “day job” skills to use and at the same time develop yet another requisite “me-too” HTML5 web app, but this time with a good purpose; namely, teaching my son more interactively.
This is a simple word/alphabet memory game I developed for teaching my child. He has trouble remembering certain colors, words and letters so this game basically mixes up a set of images and uses their filename to display an image. If the folder is prefixed with “alphabet_” it will also create a large letter “stencil” containing the first letter in the top left corner of each card.
It can easily be used for just about any subject by dropping a new folder in the images directory, full of the images you want to appear in the game.
For example’s sake, I’ve added “Animals”, “Numbers” and “Colors” as separate categories just so others can see how this is possible, and the possibilities are really endless.
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RSS Reader in jQuery .vs. JavaScript (AJAX)
Image via Wikipedia
Parsing RSS is a task that many developers have been faced with. jQuery makes this significantly easier on the client-side, but the good ol’ AJAX is not that bad either if you set things up functionally to minimize on-page code. Two versions of the same RSS Reader with parsing handled with and without the “write less, do more” JavaScript library follow.
DISCLAIMER:
I know I haven’t really captured the spirit of jQuery by using identical functions to straight JavaScript, however, I mainly wanted to show the similarities and differences between using one parser .vs. another.
FOREWARNING:
Thus, I fully accept that a jQuery whiz, which I am not yet, could clearly use the library to write a few lines of a jQuery RSS parser that would easily blow this one away in terms of efficiency and robustness, thus highlighting the advantages over using old-fashioned JavaScript.
JUSTIFICATION:
That’s just not the point of this article, which is merely a quick look at making an AJAX request and parsing XML in jQuery .vs. JavaScript.
Here’s a very basic RSS Reader in jQuery:
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BC$ = Behavior, Content, Money
The goal of the BC$ project is to raise awareness and make changes with respect to the three pillars of information freedom - Behavior (pursuit of interests and passions), Content (sharing/exchanging ideas in various formats), Money (fairness and accessibility) - bringing to light the fact that:
1. We regularly hand over our browser histories, search histories and daily online activities to companies that want our money, or, to benefit from our use of their services with lucrative ad deals or sales of personal information.
2. We create and/or consume interesting content on their services, but we aren't adequately rewarded for our creative efforts or loyalty.
3. We pay money to be connected online (and possibly also over mobile), yet we lose both time and money by allowing companies to market to us with unsolicited advertisements, irrelevant product offers and unfairly structured service pricing plans.