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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JS Transformer
- Image via Wikipedia
The official release of one of the most useful (yet hackish, and randomly pieced together from the interweb) code snippets I’ve ever made. I’m calling this useful little piece of code “JS Transformer”, since Transformers are cool again thanks to Shia LaBeouf.
NOTE:
KEEP IN MIND THE SAME-ORIGIN POLICY OF MOST BROWSERS… you’ll probably have to use a server-side proxy to make this more useful (i.e. proxy.php, proxy.jsp, proxy.asp, etc… a topic I’ve covered before)
BC$ (JS/xHTML/CSS) Web Framework
Collage of JavaScript frameworks.
(Photo credit: TripWire)
In light of the massive popularity of existing JavaScript frameworks such as Dojo, jQuery and the original one (as far as I’m concerned) Prototype.JS I’m releasing a heaping mass of code which I’ve accumulate over the past 3 years of consulting, tinkering, hacking, borrowing ideas, and learning in web development. I doubt that my own will ever reach the prolific popularity of the more popular frameworks, and even personally I’ve all but resigned to using jQuery or Prototype (depending on the problem); but I’m releasing it as a version 1.0 (Beta and FINAL release all in one) nonetheless, if only it may come in handy to someone, somewhere.
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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.