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Posts published in “Video”

Growing Young FOSS Programmers With Help of Scratch and Al Sweigart

If your young child is showing an interest in learning computers, an introduction to Scratch and these instructional videos by Al Sweigart might be in order.

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Scratch Cat
Scratch Cat, the programming language’s mascot.

Talented book author Al Sweigart is a name familiar to many in the FOSS community. He writes books for kids and for adults — including the recently released Scratch Playground. Scratch is a free visual programming language developed at MIT Media Lab as an introduction to computer programming.

His zeal and talent for explaining is remarkable. I’ve been enjoying the “60 Second Scratch” screencasts (explanatory videos) he has been uploading to YouTube in the past two weeks. For example, check out this little gem:

WebAssembly Comes to Firefox

Just when you thought that web browsers were becoming boring, Mozilla announced that Firefox 52 now supports WebAssembly, which brings greatly enhanced speeds to web apps. Learn more about how this expands the capabilities of the web for everyone.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Storytelling in the 21st Century

Some words for thought from this week’s video on nteract: “Open science isn’t truly open and open source isn’t truly open.”

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Safia Abdalla Plotcon 2016 nteract

In her PLOTCON 2016 presentation, Safia Abdalla, an open source enthusiast in Chicago, starts off saying, “The need (for human beings) to write and draw things is not new. The desire to communicate with each other has existed since the dawn of our species.” She goes on to say, “I think we’re long overdue for a renaissance that’s going to help us to communicate with each other as people…. Interactive notebooks and nteract will play a key role in the New Knowledge Renaissance.”

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

An Introduction to Open Data Kit

With just a little imagination, you could easily make yourself a pretty cool mobile app using Open Data Kit.

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Open Data Kit

Open Data Kit is a free and open source set of tools which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions. The flexibility that open source offers means that the use cases for these tools are very broad. Check this introductory video about ODK tools which explains a rural medicine use case.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Open Data Policies Necessary for Open Government

Open data is an important concept at Code for America, which addresses the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design.

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code for america big data

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Building an Open Source Eco-Village

People involved in the maker movement are coming up with all sorts ideas to both help the planet and improves people’s lives — such as this idea for an open source village.

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Open Source Village

If you’re looking for people thinking outside the box, open source people spend most of their day thinking outside the box. Witness Alex Cureton-Griffiths talking about his ideas, at MakerBay Central in Hong Kong, for an open source village in China. Yes, the text in his LibreOffice presentation appears reversed, but that’s a feature, not a bug. (Give me a few weeks to figure out why.)

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

System76 Saying Goodbye to Bland Design

Considering that System76 chose to unveil its new design plans to The Linux Gamer — no invite went to FOSS Force, BTW — we can’t help but wonder if a System76 Steam Machine isn’t in the works.

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System76 Logo

Gardiner Bryant, famed Linux gamer in Maine, recently produced this interesting video hinting at upcoming new Linux hardware from System 76.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

‘Think WordPress’ Documentary Trailer

While Linux runs the Internet, it’s the free and open source content management platform WordPress that runs most of the websites we visit to stay informed and entertained.

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WordPress logo

Open source activism takes many forms, including the creation of documentaries that celebrate and explain open source solutions. Two bold women in France, Deborah Donnier and Emilie Lebrun are working on a 50-minute documentary in French that celebrates and explains WordPress.

You can view the beautifully done trailer of their project here — with English subtitles.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

‘Night in the Woods’ Improving Games by Open Sourcing Code

“Night in the Woods,” the much anticipated crowdfunded game scheduled to be released next week — with a GNU/Linux version, BTW — built a development community by open sourcing code.

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Night in the Woods website screenshot

Game software developer Jon Manning has created a very well-done 60-second promo for his upcoming talk at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco, Feb 27-March 3, 2017 – Making Night-in-the-Woods Better with Open Source.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Charlie Reisinger’s ‘The Open Schoolhouse’

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Charlie Reisinger is the IT Director of the Penn Manor School District, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He recently finished writing a spellbinding book describing how his school district decided to adopt open source software and methods. When reading this book, I sent an email to Charlie saying: “This book reads as if it’s your doctoral thesis — it’s a multiyear capstone project.” Charlie responded, “It felt in some way like that while writing the book.” Charlie went on to tell me that the reason he wrote the book was to help other school districts make the plunge into open source. “Come on in – the water is warm!” is the reassuring tone throughout the book.

Here is my video review of this book. Note — at 27-minutes long, it’s much longer than my other video book reviews. I had no choice but to give the book its due. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling that offers hope to students and teachers everywhere.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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