Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi)

🔒
❌ À propos de FreshRSS
Il y a de nouveaux articles disponibles, cliquez pour rafraîchir la page.
À partir d’avant-hierRaspberry Pi

How to create great educational video content for computing and beyond

Over the past five years, we’ve made lots of online educational video content for our online courses, for our Isaac Computer Science platform for GCSE and A level, and for our remote lessons based on our Teach Computing Curriculum hosted on Oak National Academy.

We have learned a lot from experience and from learner feedback, and we want to share this knowledge with others. We’re also aware there’s always more to learn from people across the computing education community. That’s one reason we’re continually working to broaden the range of educators we work with. Another is that we want all learners to see themselves represented in our educational materials, because everyone belongs in computer science.

Facilitators and participants involved in the Teach Online programme.
RPF staff and the Teach Online participants

To make progress with all these goals, we ran a pilot programme for educators called Teach Online at the end of 2021 and the start of 2022. Through Teach Online, we provided twelve educators with training, opportunities, and financial and material support to help them with creating online educational content, particularly videos.

Over five online sessions and a final in-person day, we trained them in not only the production of educational videos, but also some of the pedagogy behind it. The pilot programme has now finished, and we thought we’d share some of the key points from the sessions with you in the wider community.

Learning to create a great online learning experience

When you learn new skills and knowledge, it’s important to think about how you apply these. For this reason, a useful question you can use throughout the learning process is “Why?”. So as you think about how to create the best online learning experience, ask yourself in different contexts throughout the content design and production:

  • Why am I using this style of video to illustrate this topic?
  • Why am I presenting these ideas in this order?
  • Why am I using this choice of words?

For example, it’s easy to default to creating ‘talking head’ videos featuring one person talking directly to the camera. But you should always ask why — what are the reasons for using a ‘talking head’ style. Instead, or in addition, you can make videos more engaging and support the learning experience by:

  • Turning the video into an interview
  • Adding other camera angles or screencasts to focus on demonstrations
  • Cutting away to B-roll footage (additional video that can provide context or related action, while the voiceover continues) or to still images that help connect a concept to concrete examples
Teach Computing programme participant.
Teach Online participants explored different ways to make their videos engaging

Planning is key

By planning your content carefully instead of jumping into production right away, you can:

  • Better visualise what your video should look like by creating a storyboard
  • Keep learners engaged by deliberately splitting learning up into smaller chunks while still keeping a narrative flow between them
  • Develop your learners’ understanding of key computing concepts by using semantic waves to unpack and repack concepts

The Teach Online participants told us that they particularly enjoyed learning more about planning videos:

“I now understand that a little planning can make the difference between a mediocre online learning experience and a professional-looking valuable learning experience.” – Educator who participated in our Teach Online programme

“Planning the session using a storyboard is so helpful to visualise the actual recording.” – Educator who participated in our Teach Online programme

Storyboard from a Teach Computing participant.
Storyboards are a great option to plan online learning experiences

Considering equity, diversity, and inclusion

We are committed to making computing and computer science accessible and engaging, so we embed measures to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout our free learning and teaching resources, including the Teach Online programme. It’s important not to leave this aspect of creating educational content as an afterthought: you can only make sure that your content is truly as equitable and inclusive as you can make it if you address this at every stage of your process. As an added bonus, many ways of making your content more accessible not only benefit learners with specific needs, but support and engage all of your audience so everyone can learn more easily.

Best practices that you can use while creating online content include:

Connecting with your learner audience

One of video’s key advantages is the ability to immediately connect with the audience. To help with that, you can try to talk directly to a single viewer, using “you” and “I” rather than “we”. You can also show off your personality in the presentation slides you use and the backgrounds of your videos.

“[I will use my learning from the programme] by adapting teaching and learning to actively engage learners.” – Educator who participated in our Teach Online programme

It’s important to find your own personal presenting style. There is not one perfect way to present, and you should experiment to find how you are best able to communicate with your viewers. How formal or informal will you be? Is your delivery calm or energetic? Whatever you decide, you may want to edit your script to better fit your style. A practical tip for doing this is to read your video scripts aloud while you are writing them to spot any language that feels awkward to you when spoken. 

“It was really great to try the presenting skills, and I learned a lot about my style.” – Educator who participated in our Teach Online programme

A videographer preparing to film a course presenter.

Connecting with each other

Throughout the Teach Online programme, we helped participants create a community with each other. Finding your own community can give you the support that you need to create, and help you continue to develop your knowledge and skills. Working together is great, whether that’s collaborating in-person locally, or online via for example the CAS forums or social media.

“I very much liked the diverse group of educators in this programme, and appreciated everyone sharing their experiences and tips.” – Educator who participated in our Teach Online programme

The Teach Online graduate have told us about the positive impact the programme has had on their teaching in their own contexts. So far we’ve worked with graduates to create Isaac Computer Science videos covering data structures, high- and low-level languages, and string handling.

What do you want to know about creating online educational content?

There is a growing need for online educational content, particularly videos — not only to improve access to education, but also to support in-person teaching. By investing in training educators, we help diversify the pool of people working in this area, improve the confidence of those who would like to start, and provide them with the skills and knowledge to successfully create great content for their learners.

In the future we’d also like to support the wider community of educators with creating online educational content. What resources would you find useful? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The post How to create great educational video content for computing and beyond appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Play Call of Duty with a Raspberry Pi-powered Nerf gun

YouTuber Alfredo Sequeida turned a Nerf gun into a controller for playing Call of Duty: Warzone. This is a fun-looking modification project, but some serious coding went into the process.

Head to the 13-minute mark for an in-game demonstration

Trigger happy

Funnily enough, the Nerf gun that Alfredo chose was a special edition Fortnite model. This irked him as a Call of Duty player, but this model had the most potential to accommodate the modifications he knew he wanted.

mini screen embedded on nerf gun
The screen is an old Android phone which lends its accelerometer to the project

The controller uses the Nerf gun’s original trigger. Alfredo designed extra 3D-printed buttons (white dots on the far right) to let him perform more in-game actions like moving, plating, and jumping.

Software

A Raspberry Pi 4 powers the whole thing, running Python scripts Alfredo wrote for both the Raspberry Pi and his gaming PC. Here’s all the code on GitHub.

Gameplay movement is controlled by getting accelerometer data via the command-line tool ADB logcat from an old Nexus 5 Android phone that’s mounted on the Nerf gun. The data is logged using a custom app Alfredo made on Android Studio.

raspberry pi embedded in nerf gun
A Raspberry Pi 4 wired up to all the buttons on the other side of the Nerf gun

Part of the action

The controller’s design makes players feel part of the action as their Call of Duty operator scouts around locations. It’s a much more immersive experience than holding an ordinary game controller in your lap or tapping away at a PC keyboard. Alfredo even plays standing up now his NERF gun controller is in action. He might as well be on a real life Special Ops mission.

call of duty POV game play
The Nerf gun complements the gameplay view that Call of Duty players have

More Call of Duty mod ideas…

So what’s next, Alfredo? We vote you make some modded night vision googles out of an old Viewmaster toy. That’ll totally work, right?

woman holding a view master toy up to her face to look through it
I am 90% sure young Alfredo doesn’t know what a Viewmaster is (even I had to Google it)

The post Play Call of Duty with a Raspberry Pi-powered Nerf gun appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Fix slow Nintendo Switch play with your Raspberry Pi

Is your Nintendo Switch behaving more like a Nintendon’t due to poor connectivity? Well, TopSpec (hosted Chris Barlas) has shared a brilliant Raspberry Pi-powered hack on YouTube to help you fix that.

 

Here’s the problem…

When you play Switch online, the servers are peer-to-peer. The Switches decide which Switch’s internet connection is more stable, and that player becomes the host.

However, some users have found that poor internet performance causes game play to lag. Why? It’s to do with the way data is shared between the Switches, as ‘packets’.

 

What are packets?

Think of it like this: 200 postcards will fit through your letterbox a few at a time, but one big file wrapped as a parcel won’t. Even though it’s only one, it’s too big to fit. So instead, you could receive all the postcards through the letterbox and stitch them together once they’ve been delivered.

Similarly, a packet is a small unit of data sent over a network, and packets are reassembled into a whole file, or some other chunk of related data, by the computer that receives them.

Problems arise if any of the packets containing your Switch game’s data go missing, or arrive late. This will cause the game to pause.

Fix Nintendo Switch Online Lag with a Raspberry Pi! (Ethernet Bridge)

Want to increase the slow internet speed of your Nintendo Switch? Having lag in games like Smash, Mario Maker, and more? Well, we decided to try out a really…

Chris explains that games like Call of Duty have code built in to mitigate the problems around this, but that it seems to be missing from a lot of Switch titles.

 

How can Raspberry Pi help?

The advantage of using Raspberry Pi is that it can handle wireless networking more reliably than Nintendo Switch on its own. Bring the two devices together using a LAN adapter, and you’ve got a perfect pairing. Chris reports speeds up to three times faster using this hack.

A Nintendo Switch > LAN adaptor > Raspberry Pi

He ran a download speed test using a Nintendo Switch by itself, and then using a Nintendo Switch with a LAN adapter plugged into a Raspberry Pi. He found the Switch connected to the Raspberry Pi was quicker than the Switch on its own.

At 02mins 50secs of Chris’ video, he walks through the steps you’ll need to take to get similar results.

We’ve handily linked to some of the things Chris mentions here:

 

 

To test his creation, Chris ran a speed test downloading a 10GB game, Pokémon Shield, using three different connection solutions. The Raspberry Pi hack came out “way ahead” of the wireless connection relying on the Switch alone. Of course, plugging your Switch directly into your internet router would get the fastest results of all, but routers have a habit of being miles away from where you want to sit and play.

Have a look at TopSpec on YouTube for more great videos.

The post Fix slow Nintendo Switch play with your Raspberry Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Digital Making at Home: Making games

When you’re part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation community, you’re a part of a global family of young creators who bring things to life with the power of digital making. We imagine that, given the current changes we’re all navigating, there are probably more of you who are interested in creating new and exciting things at home. And we want to help you! One of the best things we can do right now is to tap into what connects us as a community, and that’s digital making. So, welcome to Digital Making at Home from the Raspberry Pi Foundation!

Welcome to Digital Making at Home from the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Find out more about Digital Making at Home at http://rpf.io/home Find more digital making projects at http://rpf.io/projects Find out more about the #Raspber…

What is Digital Making at Home?

Whether you wrote your first line of code years ago or minutes ago, or you’ve yet to get started, with Digital Making at Home we’re inviting you on a digital making adventure each week.

Digital Making at Home from the Raspberry Pi Foundation V1

At the start of each week, we will share a theme that’s designed to jumpstart your journey of creative expression and problem solving where you create a digital making project you’re proud of. Every week, we’ll have code-along videos led by people from our team. They will walk you through projects from our free projects collection, to give you a place to start and a friendly face to accompany you!

a girl using Scratch on a laptop at home

For those of you whose mother language isn’t English, our free project guides are available in up to 30 languages so far.

Share your digital making project with us!

Each week, when you’ve made something you love using digital making, you can share it with us! Just make sure you have your parent’s or guardian’s permissions first. Then share your project by filling out this form. You might find one of your projects featured in a future blog post for the whole community to see, but no matter what, we want to see what you created!

Just because we’re all at home, that doesn’t mean we can’t create together, so let’s kick off Digital Making at Home with this week’s theme:

This week, we’re making games

Playing a game is a fun way to pass the time, but why not take it to the next level and make your own game? This week, we invite you to create a game that you can play with your friends and family!

Let your imagination run free, and if you’re not sure where to start, here are three code-along videos to help you.

Beginner level

If you’re new to coding, we want to introduce you to Scratch, a block-based coding language that is perfect to start with.

Try out Archery, led by Mr C and his sidekick Xavier:

Digital Making at Home – Archery (beginner)

Access the project guide at http://rpf.io/archery Find out more about Digital Making at Home at http://rpf.io/home Share your thoughts about this content: ht…

Go to the free Archery project guide (also available in Polish).

Intermediate level

If you’re looking to go beyond the Scratch surface, dive a little deeper into the coding language with.

Try out CATS!, led by Christina:

Digital Making at Home – CATS! (intermediate)

Access the project guide at http://rpf.io/cats Find out more about Digital Making at Home at http://rpf.io/home Share your thoughts about this content: https…

Go to the free CATS! project guide.

Advanced level

If you’re all Scratched out, move on to Python, a text-based coding language, to take things up a notch.

Try out Turtle Race, led by Marc:

Digital Making at Home – Turtle Race (advanced)

Access the project guide at http://rpf.io/turtle-race Find out more about Digital Making at Home at http://rpf.io/home Share your thoughts about this content…

Go to the free Turtle Race project guide (available in 16 languages).

More inspiration for making games

If you’re creating a game in Scratch, check out the extra videos from Mr C in the ‘Digital Making at Home: Making games’ playlist. These will show you how to add a timer, or a score, or a game over message, or a cool starter screen to any Scratch game!

A girl with her Scratch project

And if you’re into Python coding and hungry for more creative inspiration, we’ve got you covered. Our own Wireframe magazine, which you can download for free, has a ton of resources about making games. The magazine’s Source Code series shows you how to recreate an aspect of a classic game with a snippet of Python code, and you can read articles from that series on the Raspberry Pi blog. And if that’s still not enough, take a look at our Code the Classics book, which you can also download for free!

Alright friends, you’ve got all you need, so let’s get digital making!

Share your feedback

We’d love to know what you think of Digital Making at Home, so that we can make it better for you! Let us know your thoughts by filling in this form.

The post Digital Making at Home: Making games appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Build your own first-person shooter in Unity

Par : Alex Bate

Raspberry Pi Press is back with a new publication: this time, it’s Wireframe’s time to shine, with Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity.

BUILD YOUR OWN first-person shooter game in Unity || Wireframe magazine

Ever fancied creating your own first-person shooter game? Now you can with Wireframe’s brand new, 140-page bookazine, which positively heaves with tutorials and advice from expert video game developers!

Could you build a video game?

We’ve all had that moment of asking ourselves, “I wonder if I could do this?” when playing a video game. Whether as a child racing friends in Mario Kart, or in more recent years with vast open-world masterpieces, if you like games, you’ve probably thought about designing and building your own.

So, why don’t you?

With the latest publication from Wireframe and Raspberry Pi Press, you can learn how to use Unity, free software available to download online, to create your very own first-person shooter. You could build something reminiscent of DOOM, Wolfenstein, and all the other games you tried to convince your parents you were old enough to play when you really weren’t (who knew blurry, pixelated blood could be so terrifying?).

Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity

Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity leads you step-by-step through the process of making the game Zombie Panic – a frenetic battle for survival inside a castle heaving with the undead.

You’ll learn how to set up and use all the free software you’ll need, make enemies that follow and attack the player, create and texture 3D character models, and design levels with locked doors and keys.

You’ll also get tips and advice from experts, allowing you to progress your game making beyond the tutorials in the book.

Get your copy now!

Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity is available now from the Raspberry Pi Press online store with free worldwide shipping, from the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge, and as a free download from the Wireframe website.

Wait, a free download?

Yup, you read correctly. Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity can be downloaded for free as a PDF from the Wireframe website. We release free PDF versions of our books and magazines on the day they’re published; it means as many people as possible can get their hands on high-quality, up-to-date information about computing, programming and making.

However, when you buy our publications, you help us produce more great content, and you support the work of the Raspberry Pi Foundation to bring computing and digital making to people all over the world. We offer a variety of subscription options, including some terrific free gifts. And we make sure our publications are printed to feel good in your hands and look good on your bookshelf.

So, buy Build Your Own First-Person Shooter in Unity if you can – thank you, you’re amazing! And if not, grab the free PDF. Whichever you choose, we hope you make an awesome game. Don’t forget to share it with us on our social media channels.

The post Build your own first-person shooter in Unity appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Hack your old Raspberry Pi case for the Raspberry Pi 4

Par : Alex Bate

Hack your existing Raspberry Pi case to fit the layout of your new Raspberry Pi 4, with this handy “How to hack your existing Raspberry Pi case to fit the layout of your new Raspberry Pi 4” video!

Hack your old Raspberry Pi case to fit your Raspberry Pi 4

Hack your existing official Raspberry Pi case to fit the new Raspberry Pi 4, or treat yourself to the new official Raspberry Pi 4 case. The decision is yours!

How to hack your official Raspberry Pi case

  1. Take your old Raspberry Pi out of its case.
  2. Spend a little time reminiscing about all the fun times you had together.
  3. Reassure your old Raspberry Pi that this isn’t the end, and that it’ll always have a special place in your heart.
  4. Remember that one particular time – you know the one; wipe a loving tear from your eye.
  5. Your old Raspberry Pi loves you. It’s always been there for you. Why are you doing this?
  6. Look at the case. Look at it. Look how well it fits your old Raspberry Pi. Those fine, smooth edges; that perfect white and red combination. The three of you – this case, your old Raspberry Pi, and you – you make such a perfect team. You’re brilliant.
  7. Look at your new Raspberry Pi 4. Yes, it’s new, and faster, and stronger, but this isn’t about all that. This is about all you’ve gone through with your old Raspberry Pi. You’re just not ready to say goodbye. Not yet.
  8. Put your buddy, the old Raspberry Pi, back in its case and set it aside. There are still projects you can work on together; this is not the end. No, not at all.
  9. In fact, why do you keep calling it your old Raspberry Pi? There’s nothing old about it. It still works; it still does the job. Sure, your Raspberry Pi 4 can do things that this one can’t, and you’re looking forward to trying them out, but that doesn’t make this one redundant. Heck, if we went around replacing older models with newer ones all the time, Grandma would be 24 years old and you’d not get any of her amazing Sunday dinners, and you do love her honey-glazed parsnips.
  10. Turn to your new Raspberry Pi 4 and introduce yourself. It’s not its fault that you’re having a temporary crisis. It hasn’t done anything wrong. So take some time to really get to know your new friend.
  11. New friendships take time, and fresh beginnings, dare we say it…deserve new cases.
  12. Locate your nearest Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller and purchase the new Raspberry Pi 4 case, designed especially to make your new Raspberry Pi comfortable and secure.
  13. Reflect that this small purchase of a new case will support the charitable work of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Enjoy a little warm glow inside. You did good today.
  14. Turn to your old keyboard

The post Hack your old Raspberry Pi case for the Raspberry Pi 4 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Wireframe issue 1 is out now!

Wireframe is our new twice-monthly magazine that lifts the lid on video games. In Wireframe, we look at how games are made, who makes them, and how you can make games of your own. And today, we’re releasing our very first issue!

Wireframe: the new magazine that lifts the lid on video games

Wireframe is our new twice-monthly #magazine that lifts the lid on video games. In #Wireframe, we look at how #games are made, who makes them, and how you can make games of your own.

The inaugural issue

In issue 1, Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson talks to us about going indie. We look back at the British games industry’s turbulent early years; we explore how curves and probabilities shape the games we play; and we get hands-on with Nomada Studio’s forthcoming ethereal platformer, Gris.

Wireframe magazine

Plus:

  • Jessica Price on the state of game criticism
  • Portal squeezed onto the Commodore 64
  • Treasure — the iconic game studio at 25
  • Gone Home’s Kate Craig on indie game design workarounds
  • And much, much more…

About Wireframe magazine

Cutting through the hype, Wireframe takes a more indie-focused, left-field angle than traditional games magazines. As well as news, reviews, and previews, we bring you in-depth features that uncover the stories behind your favourite games.

Wireframe magazine

And on top of all that, we also help you create your own games! Our dedicated Toolbox section is packed with detailed tutorials and tips to guide you in your own game development projects.

wireframe issue 1 cover

Raspberry Pi is all about making computing and digital making accessible to everyone, and in Wireframe, we show you how programming, art, music, and design come together to make the video games you love to play — and how you can use these elements to build games yourself.

Free digital edition

We want everyone to enjoy Wireframe and learn more about creating video games, so from today, you’ll also be able to download a digital copy of issue 1 of Wireframe for free. Get all the features, guides, and lively opinion pieces of our paper-and-ink edition as a handy PDF from our website.

Wireframe in the wild

You can find the print edition of Wireframe issue 1 in select UK newsagents and supermarkets from today, priced at just £3. Subscribers also save money on the cover price, with an introductory offer of twelve issues for just £12.

For more information, and to find out how to order Wireframe from outside the UK, visit wfmag.cc.

The post Wireframe issue 1 is out now! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

❌