
Software
Invent To Learn Quickstart Guides
- Getting Started with the BBC micro:bit
- Sewing Electronics Projects Quickstart Guide
- Getting Started with the Circuit Playground Express
Essential Reading for Institute Participants
- A Plethora of Curated Progressive Education Resources by Gary Stager (discussed during fireside chat)
- Twenty Things to Do with a Computer by Cynthia Solomon and Seymour Papert
- Computer as Material: Messing About with Time by Seymour Papert and George Franz
- Logo History
- What’s the Big Idea? Toward a Pedagogy of Idea Power by Seymour Papert
- What is Logo? And Who Needs It? By Seymour Papert
- Constructing Modern Knowledge – Uncompromising Constructionism for Teacher Development by Gary Stager (This article describes the methods behind our institute approach.)
- Invention Literacy by Jay Silver
Invent To Learn Web Sites
The Daily Papert (archives of Papert writing and media)
The Invent To Learn website (oodles of resources)
Constructing Modern Knowledge Press (publisher of books by creative educators for creative educators)
Other Resources
Turtle Art Materials
- Get Turtle Art (main website)
- Browser-based TurtleArt (beta)
- TurtleArt for the iPad
- Gary Stager’s Early Turtle Art activities
- Turtle Art Activity Cards
- Thinking About Tricky Pattern Blocks in Turtle Art
- Variables and Scale in Turtle Art
- Mr. Nobody in Turtle Art
- Turtle Art Quilt Project Starter
Free Turtle Geometry e-Books
Turtlestitch Materials
- Turtlestitch Tutorial Videos
- Turtlestitch “Manual Cards”
- Project and Skill Cards by University of Warwick, Manufacturing Group
- Jennifer Lin’s Turtlestitch Blog
- Aesthetic conversations about digital embroidery
- Exploring Coding Stitching Culture (a slide deck containing lovely Turtlestitch project examples from around the world)
- Making Face Masks with Turtlestitch Embroidery
- Computers in Education Society of Ireland Turtlestitch examples
- Inkscape, Inkstitch and Turtlestitch
Inkscape is open source and free software for vector drawing – it is a viable alternative for Adobe Illustrator.
Inkstitch is an extension / add on for Inkscape, which converts vector drawings to embroidery files.
Turtlestitch has the ability to export drawings in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) which is the native format for Inkscape. It is not uncommon to make a Turtlestitch drawing that is too large for the embroidery machine to use, but Inkscape can be used to scale such drawings and then Inkstitch can make a file that can be used.
micro:bit Materials
- Curated collection of micro:bit resources
- Four Take Home Makerspaces for Under $100
- Programming Neopixels with MakeCode and the BBC micro:bit
- New micro:bit released November 2020. Same price, more features including on board speaker and mic.
Snap! Reference Materials
Turtlestitch is a dialect of Snap!
- Snap! Reference Manual
- Learning Modules for Beginners by SAP Young Thinkers
- Computer Science with Snap!, by Eckart Modrow
Snap! MOOCS and Online Courses
- Get Coding with Snap! at openSAP
- From Media Computation to Data Science at openSAP
- The Beauty and Joy of Computing
- Introduction to Computer Science at TEALS