Category Archives: creativity

Learning To Code Google Gemini AI

Posted on by
Reply

learning To Code Python
One of my friends reached out to me curious about trying to build a simple AI bot. In my social circles, I have observed many friends and family showing curiosity in learning to code. Many of these friends do not come from a formal programming background but want a way to get started. As AI continues to gain influence in our culture, I feel passionate about making sure that people feel that AI can become a helpful tool and grow a learning culture. In my view, it’s important that our workforce can adapt to a more AI-enabled environment. I believe anyone can learn to code. I also believe that citizens should feel agency and empowerment to direct AI to build a better way of life. In this brief post, I wanted to outline a few tools that would help an early-stage developer start exploring the world of AI bot construction.

  • Code Academy using Python: I greatly appreciate Code Academy for helping people “get started” in Python and JavaScript. We learn best when we connect to a concept and immediately apply it. Code academy was one of the first tools to encourage a “hands-on” approach to learning computer languages quickly.
  • Google AI Studio: Before jumping into tons of code, it’s ideal to explore what might be possible. Google AI Studio provides a simple tool to explore AI question-and-answer experiences with Google Gemini. The tool provides a nice prompt gallery to help you explore interesting uses and prompt patterns. By pressing the “get the code” button, the tool will draft your active prompt into Python or many other languages.
  • Google Gemini Python SDK: Once you have a feel for the Python language and the concepts of Gemini, you can explore more detailed tutorials for leveraging the features of Google Gemini.

These three baby steps will be enough to get you started with making a very simple bot.

As you want to explore making more robust “front-ends” or user interfaces for your bot, it will become more important to learn skills like Python back-end API design, HTML, Javascript, and responsive design. The following Free code camp links will help you explore those topics.

If you follow the FreeCodeCamp tutorials rigorously, you can achieve a few certifications. I encourage early-stage developers to post their learning projects on a public GitHub account. If you were going to hire an interior designer for your home, you would ask potentials to show a sample of work. For UX designers and programmers, it’s important to build a portfolio showing your journey of learning, your work quality, or your project impact.

Related Posts

Exploring Motivation

Posted on by
Reply

As a parent, I care deeply about how my kids own their habits of learning. In grade school, I received the gift of violin lessons from age five through high school. Looking back, my capacity for music making has become one of my most cherished life skills. Music is just fun! Music brings people together. In my faith life, music helps our community to pray. In short, I have internalized my motivation to explore music making. Beyond violin, I now play guitar, piano, do music recording, sing and ukulele.

If I’m honest with myself, I can remember the times that practicing violin felt like a chore. I can recall those times that I got in trouble because I did not practice enough. As an adult, I now have an appreciation for the gift of habits and can see the value that music-making has created in my life. When you start learning a complex piece of music, you have to deal with the emotions of feeling “overloaded.” With great mentorship of my parents and teaching, I learned the gift of taking things slow. We explored ways to chop up a piece of music into small phrases and gain competency. To move fast in music-making, you have to start slow and correct.

Reflecting on my music journey, I can see the joy, benefits and value of musicianship clearly now. The eight-year-old Michael did not have that kind of motivation. Over the next few months, I’m hoping to study some stuff around motivation so that I have additional tools to serve my kids in their lifelong journey. In this blog, we commit to the mission of helping students love learning through making, engineering, and exploration. It’s hard to keep my kids motivated on their projects and activities at times. I have a little one taking violin lessons now. It’s a joy to see her grow. And it can feel like a challenge getting her to practice regularly. Every parent has their version of this. How do I get my kids to eat their vegetables?

My wife and I will often tell each other that “they don’t come out saints.” In this phrase, we acknowledge that mentorship and parenting are hard. I also acknowledge that good parenting requires healthy habits from myself. (prayer, reflection, planning, etc.)

In this post, I did some reflection over the following Edutopia post about student motivation. Will probably do more over the next month.

To Increase Student Engagement, Focus on Motivation by Nina Parrish.

The post reflects on the idea that students tend to have more motivation to explore if they have the gift of autonomy. In my favorite book, “Invent to learn”, they foster the idea that students should have the space to select meaningful “hands-on” creative projects. If my kids really want to engineer a skateboard, I should try to cheer them on. In theory, I should also support them as their walk through the related math/construction skills. Secondly, students feel motivated when they feel like they’re gaining ground on their skills. (i.e. growing in mastery) For some kids, it’s hard for them to chop big projects into smaller stories or tasks. I probably should use my Scrum master skills on them to help them decompose problems more. That might be a fun experiment I can do soon. 🙂 Of course, kids feel motivated when they know that you care. That’s a good reminder.

To celebrate my wife a bit, I feel she did a great job inspiring motivation for our oldest son Peter. Peter has shown great curiousity around marine biology for years now. They also have tons of quality time bird watching too. As I write this blog post, we’re picking up Peter from a cool marine science camp down in the Florida keys. ( Pigeion Key ) I appreciate my wife for finding this amazing camp that empowered Peter to explore his natural curiousity. Picking him up, he’s on fire and excited for all the science and creatures he’s explored this week. Go Dr. Rosario!! I’m thankful that he had this life changing experience.

  • As a honest student of becoming a better parent, I would ask for your ideas on inspiring motivation.
  • What did a teacher or mentor do to inspire you?
  • What has worked for your kids? Very open to your inspirations.

Have a great day!

Happy New Years: Excitement for 2022!

Posted on by
Reply

Happy New Year friends! On this beautiful New Year’s day, I wanted to reflect upon some lessons from 2021 and learning opportunities for 2022. In 2022, we will continue to focus on ideas that help students love learning through exploration, making, and tinkering. As parents, we dream about helping our kids become the best version of themselves. It’s been fun to see how “maker education” and project based learning at home has encouraged growth in families.

Lessons from 2021 and learning at home

At this point, I would like to give a huge shout out to our teachers and professors who have served through this pandemic. We are so very thankful for the ways that you’ve invested in our kids and helped them to grow. They have helped our family adapt to learning from home for a significant portion of the year. Our kids did return to a traditional public school setting in the fall. We’re thankful for all the efforts of the staff and teachers to mitigate the concerns of COVID while fostering a positive learning environment.

At the Rosario home, I have tried to pay attention to hot spots of motivation and curiosity. If the kids start tinkering on the piano trying to figure out the Avenger’s theme, I’ve tried to make myself more available to encourage their musical exploration. My kids still enjoy creating their own music with Bandlab. We’ve also encouraged a good amount of traditional art with the kids. With the kid’s interest in Pokemon and Anime, they’ve become curious about drawing in this style. It’s been amazing to see the lessons they’ve learned through various drawing teachers on YouTube. Given that dad works as a software developer, it’s wonderful to see the kids engage in coding and building software. In future blog posts, we look forward to unpacking some of our more fruitful Scratch and Unity 3d tools. If your middle schooler or teen shows interest in video game development, the team at Unity 3D have continued to evolve their learning platform to be relevant to student creators. As a big kid myself, I’m still glad that our family enjoys Lego building together.

Related Posts

Trends to watch for 2022?

  • Space and wonder: I personally believe our SpaceX and NASA programs give our kids a sense of vision and potential. Over the Christmas break, the kids and I took in documentaries from NOVA on the Mars Perseverance rover and related missions. It’s so amazing the progress of our space programs in the past year. I do feel that the exploration of our universe and space travel helps keep a sense of awe and wonder about our world. It’s good the meditate upon how wonderfully complex and beautiful creation is.

  • Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality: In 2022, I look forward to exploring apps, trends, and tools that empower students to create XR experiences. I still continue to love the XR platform used for teaching and learning. It’s been fun to see the kids explore the International Space station in VR. In yet another experience, the Obama family unpacks the history of the white house in VR. I love that platforms like CoSpaces have started to empower young makers to build VR experiences with block coding. ( cospaces.io/edu/ )

  • Robots: My oldest son has expressed tons of interest in deep sea exploration. I have a feeling I’m going to start learning about playful games and simulation experiences to help him explore this. He’s found a very cool game called Subnautica that explores some of these ideas. In Subnautica, you are trying to survive an alien deep sea world using your resourcefulness and exploration skills. I do think that sea exploration using robots is really interesting. We look forward to explore trends and tools related to DIY IoT and robotics.

We are very thankful for our readers. Please know we pray for the very best for you and your family in 2022! If you have some cool projects that you’re doing with your kids, please drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.

Block Coding Activities for Your Young Maker

Posted on by
Reply

Blockly

Hello! Hope that you and your family are having a great summer! Like many families, we’ve tried to find fun and constructive ways to engage the kids through the summer while they’re out of school. One of my friends asked me if I had any fun maker activities that involved coding. In this post, I wanted to give a shout out to a few things that have engaged my family.

Dance Pary 2019 from Code.org

One of my kids has become very motivated through the art of dance. With that in mind, I introduced her to this fun “hour of code” lesson from Code.org. In this lesson, makers become connected to block based programming while directing cartoon dancers. In the early lessons, students learn to trigger dance moves based on keyboard events. I find that students become very engaged with good music. These lessons enable students to design their own dance party to various popular songs. Check out Dance Party 2019 from Code.org. Please know that you can find many more engaging hour of code lessons from Code.org with your kid’s favorite characters. They’ve currated lessons that involve Minecraft, Frozen, Lego, and more.

CSFirst from Google – Digital Story Telling

In the maker education community, Scratch has become a cornerstone tool for teaching students to code. The gallery of Scratch.mit.edu enables you to review a broad range of stories and games built by the community. Scratch offers students a general purpose platform for creating games and interactive experiences. Google has put together a pretty cool set of lessons to guide students through their initial interactions with Scratch. Lessons involve experiences with art, digital story telling, and game design. My kids have enjoyed some of the game design lessons.

Check out Google CS First.

Makey Makey

Makey Makey

As artists and makers, we enjoy the process of creating something new from something old or familiar. The Makey Makey makes this possible. Makey makey is a USB device for your Mac or PC enabling makers of all ages to experiment with human computer interaction and inventing. The Makey makey interface enables you to design playful circuits and switches. The following videos describes the Makey makey in great detail with example experiments.

In our family, we’ve enjoyed playing with musical instrument building, controlling Minecraft with fruit, and constructing novel Nerf gun targets.

If you’re looking for project ideas with step by step instructions, you can check out the following link from Instructibles.

https://www.instructables.com/howto/makey+makey/

Related Posts

Make Unity 3D Games To Amaze Your Friends!

Posted on by
Reply

Hello makers! Like many in the computer industry, I had the dream of learning how to build video games. When the math class seemed difficult, I found inspiration to move forward since I had strong motivation to learn how to build video games someday! Unity 3D and their amazing community of game creators have created powerful opportunities for curious makers to build games that amaze your friends. From my first encounters with Unity 3D, I felt that they have done a good job of educating their users. In the past few years, I greatly admire the new strategies they have created to engage learners in their tools.

The idea of “modding” has engaged generations of gamers. (Thank you Minecraft and Roblox!). We’ve become used to the idea that games setup a robust environment where you can build big and crazy things. In lots of games, you’re placed into a position of saving the world. (i.e. you’ve been given a motivation to do something bigger than yourself that’s fun). The Unity 3D “microgame” tutorials provide students with the basic shell of well crafted game experiences. In this context, the Unity 3D team have created tutorial experience to gently guide learners through the Unity 3D environment, programming concepts, and their system for building Unity “lego” blocks. In this experience, you get to select your adventure. Do you want to build your own Lego game? Do you want to make your own version of Super Mario brothers? You can challenge yourself by building a cool kart racing game. In the videos below, I wanted to give a shout out to the Lego action “game jam” and the Kart Racing tutorials.

I always enjoy learning new Unity tricks from other developers. It has been fun to pick apart aspects of these games. In the newest Kart racing tutorials, you can also learn about the newer machine learning capabilities of Unity 3D. ( ML Agents ) It kind of blows my mind that these ideas can now appear in tutorials for early stage coders. As I’ve tested these experiences with my kids, they have enjoyed creating novel kart racing experiences and environments. My older son has enjoyed customizing his own shooter game.

Make sure to check out Unity 3D’s Learning index here: https://learn.unity.com/

If you make something cool, please share a link below in the comments!

Your First Game Jam: LEGO Ideas Edition

In this edition, you will discover how to build a quest in your LEGO® Microgame using the newly released “Speak” and “Counter” LEGO® Behaviour Bricks. Learn step-by-step with a special guest from the LEGO® Games division and our Unity team to create your own unique, shareable game.

Build Your Own Karting Microgame

It’s never been easier to start creating with Unity. From download to Microgame selection, to modding, playing, and sharing your first playable game, this video shows you what you can accomplish in as little as 30 minutes!

For detailed step-by-step Unity tutorials, check out

The Official Guide to Your First Day in Unity playlist.

Related Posts

Christmas Ornament Ideas Using Origami, 3D printing, and Laser Cutting

Posted on by
Reply

Like many other families, we really enjoy creating DIY Christmas ornaments. We collected a few inspirations for ornaments made with 3D printing, laser cutting, and origami. Hope you find something that inspires you!

Interested in Building Your Own Christmas Ornament using a 3D printer? Check out my getting started video here. In this video, we’ll help you build simple objects in just 5 minutes. TinkerCAD.com is crazy fun for makers of all ages. Keep in mind that your local library sometimes offers free 3D printing services.

You can find many more origami ideas here on PInterest.

Our Experiments To Improve Our Home Schooling Culture

Posted on by
Reply

Hello, friends. As our family tries to adapt to the new normal and the COVID pandemic, I wanted to start reflecting on how our family plans to promote a learning culture. Over the years, InspiredToEducate.NET has taken on the mission of helping students love learning through making, tinkering, and engineering. As working professionals, Sarah and I want to make sure we’re still providing the best learning environment for our kids. Like many other families, we have decided to home school/virtual school our kids due to health risks. To serve other parents struggling with these transitions, I wanted to share some the ideas we’ve researched. Make sure to check out the blog posts at the end of this article.

PRO’s of virtual school + home school approach

  • Personalized learning: In general, Sarah and I find the concept of personalized learning attractive. Every student has different strengths and weaknesses. The asynchronous nature of online learning can provide the student to learn at their own pace. In many cases, lectures will be assigned in recorded in video format. If you don’t understand something, you can always hit the pause button and rewind. Does your student need more context on a topic? Students can jump on YouTube and find a Khan academy video that probably complements the class material.

  • Gaining key career skills: It’s interesting to consider the 21st century career skills our kids will explore with online virtual school. In the spring, I greatly enjoyed seeing my son prepare a pretty awesome history presentation that he shared with his class. He was very intentional about the visual look of the slides. I also admired how he practiced his presentation for clarity. I know he aspires to run his own YouTube channel some day. So, he’s getting some pretty cool practice through this online learning experience. It’s important to reflect upon the long term benefits of the “online” learning modality.

  • Exploring game based learning, simulations and project based learning: Some online teachers have started leaning into the benefits of a flipped classroom model. Under this model, students take in videos/lectures as homework assignments. When the student and teacher have “face to face” time, they can leverage their interactions to clarify knowledge and explore. Some teachers have exploited learning games or hands-on learning projects to deepen knowledge.

Our honest pain points with home schooling/virtual schooling

As our family has moved to online learning out of necessity, I have gained a great respect for families who have decided to home school their kids outside the scope of the pandemic. The self discipline and habits required to make a great learning environment at home do not come naturally. It takes a lot of work.

In our family in the Spring, if we didn’t create a good plan for the week, we could easily miss assignments or support time for our kids. Like many families, Sarah and I both work full time jobs with busy calendars. It’s not trivial to keep a mode of “focused” work in a professional context while supporting our kids. I do want to thank my niece Rosemary for helping us in the Spring. While living with us during the virus outbreak, she has been very helpful supporting our kids in school work and helping them stay focused and organized. Our appreciation for her can not be understated.

As we reflect on our Spring adventures with home schooling/online learning, Sarah and I know we have to up our game plan for the fall. Here’s our plan in progress.

Themes of our learning culture plan

  • Becoming a better Peacher(Parent/Teacher/Project manager): As we think through the fall, I know that Sarah and I will need to schedule regular time to answer questions and times for regular teacher communication. In some of our previous explorations of maker mindset in teaching, we found many good themes that will become helpful. Teaching isn’t always about being the fountain of knowledge and sharing it. Teaching sometimes looks a bit more like project management where we’re teaching students how to break big problems into small problems. We teach students how to ask better questions. We connect students with the key search tools they need to discover their own knowledge. We meet students where they’re at.

  • Family weekly planning: From looking at blogs on virtual schools, it’s common for these schools to provide assignment tracking and organization tools. I think it will be important to find these tools and organize them into a system. I hope that we can take this a step forward though. At my work, we chunk our work into two week cycles or plans. We start each cycle with a meeting called “sprint planning.” This enables us to find the most valuable and easy work we can be doing to help the project move forward and meet deadlines. I think Sarah and I will come up with a family version of this meeting us. We’ll probably use some tools like MindMeister, Google Documents, or Trello to help us stay organized and monitor work.

Here’s a cool video exploring the idea of family weekly planning using Agile ideas …

If you need an agenda for this kind of meeting, check out our post here.

  • Inspect and adapt: We know that we will not make a perfect plan. With that in mind, we plan to have a meeting weekly to see how we’re doing as a family. What’s working well? What are common road blocks? How can we get better? What resources can we leverage outside our family to promote a peaceful, prayerful, healthy and a happy family?

  • Creating zones of focus: Sarah and I have a good degree of schedule flexibility. We’re very fortunate to have this situation. We’re thinking through how we can rigorously leverage our calendars to weave school support into lives while meeting the requirements of our jobs. In brutal honesty, this will be crazy hard.

  • Elements of a good weekly schedule

    • Schedule prayer time
    • Schedule breaks and play time
    • Try to keep a normal work schedule
    • Schedule time for music practice
    • Keep a good backlog of projects/hobby projects
    • Schedule time for socially distance sports or outdoor time
    • Schedule time-box for reading
  • Seek out index of good support/course videos: We already love resources like Khan academy, Coursera, prodigygame.com, and Tynker.com. What other open courseware tools are available to families at low cost? Check out https://www.lifehack.org/articles/money/25-killer-sites-for-free-online-education.html

  • Experiment with time management patterns: Adding Pomodoro to my day: I’m thinking about trying out Pomodoro in my professional work. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique ) In this work pattern, you try to enter a zone of focused work for 25 minutes. After the 25 minutes, you take a break for 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes, it may be possible to do a check-in on kids. We’ll let you know if this works or not.

Interested in project based learning for families? Interested in sharing ideas for helping your kids love learning by making cool stuff? We want to welcome you to our new InspiredToEducate.NET facebook group. In this community, we hope learn and support each other as we promote learning cultures in our families.

Join our community on Creative Learning Projects on Facebook!

Related Posts

References

  • https://www.baystateparent.com/news/20200416/homeschooling-101-tips-for-parents-adjusting-virtual-learning-with-kids
  • https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/virtual-schools/
  • https://www.connectionsacademy.com/support/resources/article/virtual-school-and-working-parents-ways-to-make-it-work

Build an AFrame.IO Scene on Oculus Quest with Teleportation

Posted on by
Reply

FireFox Mixed Reality

Hey web developers! Looking for a fun way to build VR experiences on the Oculus Quest? This tutorial will provide a brief guide to drafting an AFrame.IO VR experience that includes GLTF model loading and teleportation controls. As web developers, we have the unique opportunity to link data, models, and services to WebXR experiences. We really love seeing AFrame.IO work well on the Oculus platform. These are exciting times and trends!

AFrame.IO Script for Oculus WebXR

Fork the script at https://aframeexamples.glitch.me. In 2023, I feel that @ProfStemkoski has created one of the best collections of AFrame.IO templates. I like how he keeps his examples relatively small. It makes it easier to find a starting point for your project. Under the “quest-extras.html”, you’ll find an approachable example for starting with a “player movement” component that works with Oculus Quest. This example also shows an example for object interactivity via raycasting.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <title>A-Frame: Quest movement and interaction</title>
    <meta name="description" content="Moving around an A-Frame scene with Quest touch controllers.">
    <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/1.3.0/aframe.min.js"></script>
    <script src="js/aframe-environment-component.js"></script>
    <script src="js/controller-listener.js"></script>
    <script src="js/player-move.js"></script>
    <script src="js/raycaster-extras.js"></script>
</head>

<body>

<script>
// if raycaster is pointing at this object, press trigger to change color
AFRAME.registerComponent("raycaster-color-change", {
    init: function () 
    {
        this.colors = ["red", "orange", "yellow", "green", "blue", "violet"];
        this.controllerData = document.querySelector("#controller-data").components["controller-listener"];
        this.hoverData      = this.el.components["raycaster-target"];
    },

    tick: function()
    {
        if (this.hoverData.hasFocus && this.controllerData.rightTrigger.pressed )
        {
            let index = Math.floor( this.colors.length * Math.random() );
            let color = this.colors[index];
            this.el.setAttribute("color", color);
        }

        if (!this.hoverData.hasFocus || this.controllerData.rightTrigger.released)
        {
            this.el.setAttribute("color", "#CCCCCC");
        }
    }
});


</script>

<a-scene environment="preset: default;" renderer="antialias: true;">

    <a-assets>
        <img id="gradient" src="images/gradient-fade.png" />
    </a-assets>

    <a-sky 
        color = "#000337">
    </a-sky>

    <!-- use a simple mesh for raycasting/navigation -->
    <a-plane
        width="100" height="100"
        rotation="-90 0 0"
        position="0 0.01 0"
        visible="false"
        class="groundPlane"
        raycaster-target>
    </a-plane>

    <a-entity 
        id="player" 
        position="0 0 0" 
        player-move="controllerListenerId: #controller-data;
                     navigationMeshClass: groundPlane;">

        <a-camera></a-camera>

        <a-entity 
            id="controller-data" 
            controller-listener="leftControllerId:  #left-controller; 
                                 rightControllerId: #right-controller;">
        </a-entity>

        <a-entity 
            id="left-controller"
            oculus-touch-controls="hand: left">
        </a-entity>

        <!-- experiment with raycasting interval; slight performance improvement but jittery appearance in world -->
        <a-entity
            id="right-controller"
            oculus-touch-controls="hand: right"
            raycaster="objects: .raycaster-target; interval: 0;"
            raycaster-extras="controllerListenerId: #controller-data; 
                              beamImageSrc: #gradient; beamLength: 0.5;">
        </a-entity>

    </a-entity>

    <a-torus-knot 
        p="2" q="3" radius="0.5" radius-tubular="0.1"
        position = "-2.5 1.5 -4"
        color="#CC3333"
        raycaster-target>
    </a-torus-knot>

    <a-box
        width = "2" height = "1" depth = "1"
        position = "-1 0.5 -3"
        rotation = "0 45 0"  
        color = "#FF8800"
        class = ""
        raycaster-target>
    </a-box>

    <a-sphere
        radius = "1.25"
        position = "0 1.25 -5"
        color = "#DDBB00"
        raycaster-target>
    </a-sphere>

    <a-cylinder
        radius = "0.5" height = "1.5"
        position = " 1 0.75 -3"
        color = "#008800" 
        raycaster-target>
    </a-cylinder>

    <a-cone
        radius-bottom = "1" radius-top = "0" height = "2"
        position = "3 1 -4"
        color = "#4444CC"
        raycaster-target>
    </a-cone>

    <a-torus 
        radius="0.5" radius-tubular="0.1"
        position = "2 3 -4"
        rotation = "30 -20 0"
        color="#8800FF"
        raycaster-target>
    </a-torus>

    <!-- demo interaction boxes -->

    <a-dodecahedron
        radius = "0.5"
        position = "-0.8 1 -2"
        color = "#EEEEEE"
        raycaster-target="canGrab: true;"
        raycaster-color-change>
    </a-dodecahedron>

    <a-icosahedron
        radius = "0.5"
        position = "0.8 1 -2"
        color = "#EEEEEE"
        raycaster-target="canGrab: true;"
        raycaster-color-change>
    </a-icosahedron>

</a-scene>

</body>
</html>

I also admire the work of Ada Rose Canon too. You can find a very complete starter kit for AFrame.IO here:
https://aframe-xr-starterkit.glitch.me/. This example shows features like collision detection, AR integration, and more.

Let us know if you make anything cool!!

Top Stories on InspiredToEducate.NET

14 AFrame.IO Resources For Your WebXR Project

Posted on by
Reply

AFrame Logo

I’m a big fan of the work of the AFrame.IO community.  Thank you to Mozilla, Diego Marcos, Kevin Ngo, and Don McCurdy for their influence and effort to build a fun and productive platform for building WebVR experiences.   In this post, I’ve collected a few Github repositories and resources to support you in building AFrame experiences.

Talk Abstract: In the next few years, augmented reality and virtual reality will continue to provide innovations in gaming, education, and training. Other applications might include helping you tour your next vacation resort or explore a future architecture design. Thanks to open web standards like WebXR, web developers can leverage their existing skills in JavaScript and HTML to create delightful VR experiences. During this session, we will explore A-Frame.io, an open source project supported by Mozilla enabling you to craft VR experiences using JavaScript and a growing ecosystem of web components.

https://github.com/ngokevin/kframe
Kevin’s collection of A-Frame components and scenes.

https://webvr.donmccurdy.com/
Awesome WebXR from Don McCurdy

https://github.com/feiss/aframe-environment-component
Infinite background environments for your A-Frame VR scene in just one file.

https://github.com/aframevr/aframe-school
Interactive workshop and lessons for learning A-Frame and WebVR.

https://aframe.io/aframe-registry/
Official registry of cool AFrame stuff

https://github.com/donmccurdy/aframe-physics-system
Components for A-Frame physics integration, built on CANNON.js.

Experiment with AR and A-Frame
AFrame now has support for ARCore. Paint the real world with your XR content! Using FireFox Reality for iOS, you can leverage ARKit on your favorite IPad or IPhone.

https://github.com/michaelprosario/aframe
I’ve collected a small collection of demo apps to explore some of the core ideas of AFrame.

AFrame Layout Component
Automatically positions child entities in 3D space, with several layouts to choose from.

Animation
An animation component for A-Frame using anime.js. Also check out the animation-timeline component for defining and orchestrating timelines of animations.

Super Hands
All-in-one natural hand controller, pointer, and gaze interaction library for A-Frame. Seems to work well with Oculus Quest.

A-Frame Component loading Google Poly models from Google Poly
 Component enables you to quickly load 3D content from Google Poly

aframe-htmlembed-component
HTML Component for A-Frame VR that allows for interaction with HTML in VR. Demo

https://github.com/nylki/aframe-lsystem-component
L-System/LSystem component for A-Frame to draw 3D turtle graphics. Using Lindenmayer as backend.

Thanks to the amazing work from Mozilla, WebXR usability has improved leveraging specialized FireFox browsers
– FireFox Reality
– FireFox Reality for HoloLens 2 – For raw ThreeJs scripts, it works well. I’m still doing testing on AFrame scenes.

If you live in Central Florida or Orlando, consider checking out our local chapter of Google developer Group.  We enjoy building a fun creative community of developers, sharing ideas, code, and supporting each other in the craft of software.  Learn more about our community here:

GDGCentralFlorida.org

Top Stories on InspiredToEducate.NET

3D Modeling for Minecraft using TinkerCad – Online Meetup June 20th

Posted on by
Reply

As adult learners or students, we’re all looking for new fruitful activities that we can share with our friends and family. In this hands-on workshop, we’re partnering with Google Developer Group of Central Florida to learn how you can build 3D stuff for a 3D printer, a Unity game, and Minecraft!

  • WHO: Families, developers, tinkerers
  • WHERE: Online Google Meet
  • WHEN: June 20th at 1pm

In this workshop, we’ll build amazing stuff in Minecraft that will WOW your friends! You’ll learn the basics of 3D modeling using TinkerCAD, a free tool for modeling! You’ll have fun constructing 3D worlds and playing them in Minecraft. Using TinkerCAD, we’ll convert your 3D worlds into Minecraft schematics that can be imported using WorldEdit.

For families, we hope that you consider bringing your kids with you and learning together.

For developers, we’ll cover a few API’s to build 3D models using JavaScript too.

You’ll need to register for a free account on TinkerCad. You’ll also need to obtain the Minecraft Java Edition. You may want to install WorldEdit ahead of time too: Setup WorldEdit on Minecraft

To join the video meeting, click this link: Meeting Link on Google Meet

I hope that you can join us!

Related posts: