Designer Jeffrey Karl illustrated a Codecademy Kids for the iPad app to help more kids learn how to code. While not developed (yet!), his ideas show how to get any child interested in coding.

Why do you think kids should learn to code?

It's not that you need to master code, but everyone should know the basics. I had heard about how the country of Estonia mandated that elementary school students learn how to program, and also how there are not enough code literate people. There's a big barrier to entry to learning how to code - so how do you lower it?

How do you get them started?

One way to make kids excited about coding - or learning anything for that matter - is providing context for whatever subject it is you want to teach them ("If you learn this, you'll be able to..."). Let them know that if they code they'll be able to make their own games, or code their own website, or maybe just having fun with a more game-like or story-driven experience will be enough.

Coding is intimidating even to adults - how does this app help?

I wanted it to feel very tactile, like a child's arts and crafts project — each interactive element in the app is something to move around.

I used drag and drop (roughly borrowed from Scratch) to simplify the experience. I had the idea of having pre-made tools; for kids, they don't need to know the intricacies of writing code. So say you want to write an If / Else function in JavaScript. Drag and drop a function from the toolbox onto the looseleaf paper, then go back and grab the If / Else bit and drop it inside of the function. You'll see them expand so you can look at syntax. In the beginning, it's more the structuring of code that matters.

Without badges, what's the motivation for kids to do lessons?

Instead of getting badges for the sake of badges, in this app you're getting robot parts so that you can build a robot of your choice.

A robot represents a course. We need help building this robot and you do that by completing the lessons. There are different sized lessons so that you can add a leg and an arm, and it's fine to add three arms to make a really big robot (or a really long lesson) too! Each of the sections highlights a different part of the body.

As a game designer, how do you keep kids engaged?

I recently saw a talk given by Sebastian Deterding. He stressed that gamification is more than badges, leaderboards and points; it's about providing a meaningful experience for the user. One way to do that is through creating a fun story. This was basically the solution I used with Codecademy Kids for the iPad: the current system of badges aren't really related in any meaningful way - save the overlapping skill set it takes to complete each. Providing a storyline where kids can help this friendly character, Ratchet the monkey, build the individual parts of a robot is one way to contextualize these lessons for children.

Dean John Jeffries is retiring at the end of June after forty years of service to UMBC. In recognition of his profound impact on UMBC, we are delighted to announce the establishment of the John Jeffries International Fellowship.

The Fellowship fund honors John’s commitment to building a strong and distinctive undergraduate curriculum and to educating students to become informed and engaged global citizens. The Fellowship will provide faculty with resources to create, or redesign, and teach a course in their fields in order to add or enhance an explicit international or transnational focus. Our expectation is that the resulting courses will be taught regularly and will broaden the intellectual scope of the curriculum in the College of Arts, Humanities, and  Social Sciences.

In a matter of weeks, current and former Department Chairs, Program Directors, and Associate Deans in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences have contributed more than $25,000 to endow the John Jeffries Fellowship. Since then, others have contributed towards the goal of $200,000, which will enable the campus to support two Jeffries Fellows each year.

If you are interested in making a gift to the John Jeffries International Fellowship Program or have any questions, please contact Marjoleine Kars, Jason Loviglio, or Carole McCann.

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled four open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July 2013, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla), Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Charles McCathieNevile (Yandex), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), and Chris Wilson (Google). Many thanks to Ora Lassila (Nokia) and Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University) whose term ends this month. Read more about the Advisory Board.

The HTML Working Group has updated three Working Drafts and published three Group Notes:

• a Working Draft of HTML 5.1. This specification defines the 5th major version, first minor revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
• a Working Draft of Differences from HTML4. HTML is the core language of the World Wide Web. The W3C publishes HTML5 and HTML5.1. The WHATWG publishes HTML, which is a rough superset of W3C HTML5.1. "Differences from HTML4" describes the differences of the HTML specifications from those of HTML4, and calls out cases where they differ from each other.
• a Working Draft of HTML Canvas 2D Context, Level 2. This specification defines the 2D Context for the HTML canvas element. The 2D Context provides objects, methods, and properties to draw and manipulate graphics on a canvas drawing surface.
• a Group Note of HTML5: Edition for Web Authors. This document, now discontinued and made available for historical purposes, is targeted toward Web authors and others who are not UA implementors and who want a view of the HTML specification that focuses more precisely on details relevant to using the HTML language to create Web documents and Web applications.
• a Group Note of main element - an HTML5 extension specification. This specification, now integrated into the HTML specification and no longer developed separately, defines an element to be used for the identification of the main content area of a document. It also defines an HTML element that embodies the semantics and function of the WAI-ARIA landmark role=main.
• a Group Note of HTML: The Markup Language (an HTML language reference). This document describes the HTML markup language and provides details to help producers of HTML content create documents that conform to the language. This document has been discontinued and is only made available for historical purposes. For an up to date reference on HTML elements (and more) please consult Web Platform Docs.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

In version 2.5 WordPress introduced shortcodes, and all of us have probably used them at one time or another. They usually come bundled with plugins, or even themes, and what they do is watch for when you insert something inside square brackets then replace that with some other content; it could be a simple sentence or it could be a massive PHP function, it all depends on what you instructed WordPress to do.

Bundled shortcodes are great, and speed up things considerably, but wouldn’t it be great to know how to create shortcodes of your own?

In this article I’ll take you through creating some simple WordPress shortcodes to help you create any functionality you like.

A simple shortcode

The shortcode API works very simply: first you need to create a callback function that will run anytime the shortcode is used; then you need to tie that function to a specific shortcode making it ready for use. The code is frequently placed in the functions.php file, but if you plan on having a lot of shortcodes, it makes sense to create a separate file and include that file in your functions.php file.

In our first example we want to create a shortcode that will create some lorem ipsum every time we type [lorem] into the editor. First we need to create the callback function that will return the lorem ipsum (in shortcodes we don’t echo anything, everything is returned):

function lorem_function() {
      return 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec nec nulla vitae lacus mattis volutpat eu at sapien. Nunc interdum congue libero, quis laoreet elit sagittis ut. Pellentesque lacus erat, dictum condimentum pharetra vel, malesuada volutpat risus. Nunc sit amet risus dolor. Etiam posuere tellus nisl. Integer lorem ligula, tempor eu laoreet ac, eleifend quis diam. Proin cursus, nibh eu vehicula varius, lacus elit eleifend elit, eget commodo ante felis at neque. Integer sit amet justo sed elit porta convallis a at metus. Suspendisse molestie turpis pulvinar nisl tincidunt quis fringilla enim lobortis. Curabitur placerat quam ac sem venenatis blandit. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nullam sed ligula nisl. Nam ullamcorper elit id magna hendrerit sit amet dignissim elit sodales. Aenean accumsan consectetur rutrum.';
    }
    

Next we need to add this shortcode to WordPress using the add_shortcode function in either our functions.php file or a file that’s being included in it, this function adds the shortcode and also ties it to the function we just created. add_shortcode only takes two arguments, the first one being the name we want this shortcode to have (what we will type between the square brackets) and the second one being the function we want to attach to that shortcode:

add_shortcode('lorem', 'lorem_function');

That is all it takes to create a simple shortcode in WordPress.

Adding parameters

Continuing with this dummy content idea, we often need images in our content when we preparing our mockups and these images need to be different sizes, so now we’ll create a shortcode to insert an image like this:

[picture width="500" height="500"]

When WordPress encounters this we want a function that will insert an image. It needs to read the width and height attributes, but just in case we’ll also provide default values so that it can be used without the attributes. Because we may not have an image available, we’re going to use the lorempixel.com service to provide us with a random image.

First we need to create the function:

function random_picture($atts) {
       extract(shortcode_atts(array(
          'width' => 400,
          'height' => 200,
       ), $atts));
    return '<img src="http://lorempixel.com/'. $width . '/'. $height . '" />';
    }
    

We named this function random_picture and since this shortcode will be able to take arguments we gave it the $atts parameter. In order to use the attributes we need two functions: the shortcode_atts which is a WordPress function that combines our attributes with known attributes and fills in defaults when needed; and the extract PHP function which, as the name suggests, extracts those attributes we set for our shortcode. Finally the function returns the value we want, in this case the HTML code for our image combined with the width and height variables.

The only thing left to do is register this shortcode:

add_shortcode('picture', 'random_picture');

Our shortcode is complete, when we type [picture] it will give us a random image 400 by 200, and if we use the attributes we can create an image of any size we please.

Conclusion 

Creating little shortcodes for things we use frequently definitely helps us when writing blog posts because you can do anything you please with shortcodes, it can be as simple as returning a sentence, or as complex as adding a form or the latest posts sorted by month.

Have you created helpful shortcodes for WordPress? What shortcodes do you wish existed? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, code image via Marjan Krebelj.

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In version 2.5 WordPress introduced shortcodes, and all of us have probably used them at one time or another. They usually come bundled with plugins, or even themes, and what they do is watch for when you insert something inside square brackets then replace that with some other content; it could be a simple sentence or it could be a massive PHP function, it all depends on what you instructed WordPress to do.

Bundled shortcodes are great, and speed up things considerably, but wouldn’t it be great to know how to create shortcodes of your own?

In this article I’ll take you through creating some simple WordPress shortcodes to help you create any functionality you like.

A simple shortcode

The shortcode API works very simply: first you need to create a callback function that will run anytime the shortcode is used; then you need to tie that function to a specific shortcode making it ready for use. The code is frequently placed in the functions.php file, but if you plan on having a lot of shortcodes, it makes sense to create a separate file and include that file in your functions.php file.

In our first example we want to create a shortcode that will create some lorem ipsum every time we type [lorem] into the editor. First we need to create the callback function that will return the lorem ipsum (in shortcodes we don’t echo anything, everything is returned):

function lorem_function() { return 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec nec nulla vitae lacus mattis volutpat eu at sapien. Nunc interdum congue libero, quis laoreet elit sagittis ut. Pellentesque lacus erat, dictum condimentum pharetra vel, malesuada volutpat risus. Nunc sit amet risus dolor. Etiam posuere tellus nisl. Integer lorem ligula, tempor eu laoreet ac, eleifend quis diam. Proin cursus, nibh eu vehicula varius, lacus elit eleifend elit, eget commodo ante felis at neque. Integer sit amet justo sed elit porta convallis a at metus. Suspendisse molestie turpis pulvinar nisl tincidunt quis fringilla enim lobortis. Curabitur placerat quam ac sem venenatis blandit. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nullam sed ligula nisl. Nam ullamcorper elit id magna hendrerit sit amet dignissim elit sodales. Aenean accumsan consectetur rutrum.'; } 

Next we need to add this shortcode to WordPress using the add_shortcode function in either our functions.php file or a file that’s being included in it, this function adds the shortcode and also ties it to the function we just created. add_shortcode only takes two arguments, the first one being the name we want this shortcode to have (what we will type between the square brackets) and the second one being the function we want to attach to that shortcode:

add_shortcode('lorem', 'lorem_function');

That is all it takes to create a simple shortcode in WordPress.

Adding parameters

Continuing with this dummy content idea, we often need images in our content when we preparing our mockups and these images need to be different sizes, so now we’ll create a shortcode to insert an image like this:

[picture width="500" height="500"]

When WordPress encounters this we want a function that will insert an image. It needs to read the width and height attributes, but just in case we’ll also provide default values so that it can be used without the attributes. Because we may not have an image available, we’re going to use the lorempixel.com service to provide us with a random image.

First we need to create the function:

function random_picture($atts) { extract(shortcode_atts(array( 'width' => 400, 'height' => 200, ), $atts)); return '<img src="http://lorempixel.com/'. $width . '/'. $height . '" />'; } 

We named this function random_picture and since this shortcode will be able to take arguments we gave it the $atts parameter. In order to use the attributes we need two functions: the shortcode_atts which is a WordPress function that combines our attributes with known attributes and fills in defaults when needed; and the extract PHP function which, as the name suggests, extracts those attributes we set for our shortcode. Finally the function returns the value we want, in this case the HTML code for our image combined with the width and height variables.

The only thing left to do is register this shortcode:

add_shortcode('picture', 'random_picture');

Our shortcode is complete, when we type [picture] it will give us a random image 400 by 200, and if we use the attributes we can create an image of any size we please.

Conclusion 

Creating little shortcodes for things we use frequently definitely helps us when writing blog posts because you can do anything you please with shortcodes, it can be as simple as returning a sentence, or as complex as adding a form or the latest posts sorted by month.

Have you created helpful shortcodes for WordPress? What shortcodes do you wish existed? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, code image via Marjan Krebelj.

Protect your Mac’s Sensitive Data with MacHider – only $4.97!

In this episode of The Treehouse Show, Nick Pettit (@nickrp) and Jason Seifer (@jseifer) talk about Flat UI Colors, Don’t do’s with jQuery and Usability.

Here are the links for the week:

Flat UI Colors
http://flatuicolors.com/

5 Things You Should Stop Doing With jQuery | Flippin’ Awesome
http://flippinawesome.org/2013/05/06/5-things-you-should-stop-doing-with-jquery/

ScriptCraft/docs/YoungPersonsGuideToProgrammingMinecraft.md at master · walterhiggins/ScriptCraft · GitHub
http://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/docs/YoungPersonsGuideToProgrammingMinecraft.md

Framer – Prototyping Tool
http://www.framerjs.com/

Usability checklist | Userium | Catch common usability problems before user testing.
http://userium.com/

Ghostlab
http://vanamco.com/ghostlab/

Handy Sass Mixins – Web Design Weekly
http://web-design-weekly.com/2013/05/12/handy-sass-mixins/

Hammer.js – A javascript library for multi-touch gestures
http://eightmedia.github.io/hammer.js/

The post Flat UI Colors, Don’t Do’s with jQuery and Usability – Treehouse Show Episode 42 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.