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Resources | CoderDojo Mentors and Champions from Dojos all around the world are generating fantastic resources that can help others get started or run your dojo sessions. We would like to include them all in this section as a one stop shop for all you needs. Kata - Knowledge Base This is a knowledge base of coursework that has been developed by mentors from around the world. Go to Kata >> Administrative Resources There are some administrative resources available on Kata as well which we will be moving back here in due time. Go to Kata >> Community Calls Our new monthly community calls with other Dojo organizers to answer and ask questions about managing, running and growing your Dojo. View Calls >> Google Groups Most Dojos have there own Google groups for communicating between mentor and parents however there is also one very active group for Dojo champions and we recommend you join if you are a champion or plan on becoming one. Join the group >>

Top New York Based Venture Capitalists You Should Know Chris Dixon, Founder Collective The Co-founder of Site Advisor (acquired by McAfee) and Hunch (acquired by eBay) is quickly showing New York what our tech scene needs: successes. While we don’t have an east coast Paypal who’s founders have spun off organizations like Founders Fund, Linkedin, Tesla and SpaceX, we do have Chris Dixon. This Techcrunch contributor has invested his own money and Founder Collective’s, in companies like Skype, Invite Media, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, SeatGeek, Posterous and About.me. Dixon blogs at and is active with his Twitter followers. Roger Ehrenberg, IA Ventures Short for Information Arbitrage, IA has a focus on digital media and fintech. David Pakman, Venrock As New York as it comes, the name Venrock is a compound of “venture” and “Rockefeller”. Stuart Ellman and Jim Robinson IV, RRE Ventures Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures Josh Kusher, Thrive Capital Eric Hippeu, Lerer Ventures Ken and Ben Lerer Howard Morgan, First Round Capital

A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes) :: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Yeah, these are the two. My asthma’s kickin’ in so I’ve got to go take a puff of medicated air just now. Be with you in a moment. I’m told that this chapter is best accompanied by a rag. Something you can mop your face with as the sweat pours off your face. Indeed, we’ll be racing through the whole language. 1. My conscience won’t let me call Ruby a computer language. But what do you call the language when your brain begins to think in that language? We can no longer truthfully call it a computer language. Read the following aloud to yourself. 5.times { print "Odelay!" In English sentences, punctuation (such as periods, exclamations, parentheses) are silent. Which is exactly what this small Ruby program does. exit unless "restaurant".include? Here we’re doing a basic reality check. Ever seen a programming language use question marks so effectively? ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine'].each { |food| print food.capitalize } The computer then courteously responds: Toast, Cheese and Wine. 2. Variables

NYC Real Estate Startup RealDirect Adds Map Search And Compatibility Rankings RealDirect.com was built around a compelling proposition for home sellers — instead of paying the 6 percent broker fee, let RealDirect handle the listings and offer advice from agents, while only paying $395 a month or a 1 or 2 percent commission (depending on the level of services). Now, however, the site is also trying to be useful for home buyers. Specifically, instead of expecting buyers to find the listings through various real estate databases, RealDirect is launching its own map-based interface. It’s pretty straightforward — you enter things like the neighborhoods you want to look at, the maximum price, and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, then you get a map with all the houses that fit your criteria. You can also draw a lasso around the area that you want to search in and browse data about different neighborhoods. “Every single buyer makes some sort of compromise,” says co-founder and CEO Doug Perlson puts it. For now, RealDirect is limited to Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Read This Paragraph At my local Barnes and Noble, there is a huge wall of Java books just waiting to tip over and crush me one day. And one day it will. At the rate things are going, one day that bookcase will be tall enough to crush us all. It might even loop the world several times, crushing previous editions of the same Java books over and over again. And This Paragraph Too This is just a small Ruby book. But Don’t Read This One! Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is released under the Attribution-ShareAlike License. Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Paragraph I’ll try not to feel utterly rejected if this book doesn’t capture your fancy. Learning to Program A very basic, ground-level tutorial for the beginner to Ruby. Now, if you can’t seem to find the contents link on the left-hand side of the page, then here’s a link to the first page of the (Poignant) Guide. Welcome to the pirate radio of technical manuals.

Made In New York Digital Map Games Learning Society About Games Research People Courses Conference Contact Jobs Current Courses C&I 277 Videogames & Learning Professor: Constance Steinkuehler View "You Play" papers written by previous C&I277 students Videogames have captured much national attention as a powerful learning technology. The goals of this course are: To engage students in thinking deeply and critically about their everyday videogame play, To strengthen students' critical thinking about research & media reports on games, and To foster students' reflection on the ways in which learning is a vital part of everyday life, relevant not only to formal educational contexts but also to everyday work, socialization, and play. This course meets Comm B requirements, so it is writing intensive. C&I 975 Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis is a method of closely examining language in order to connect the micro-dynamics of language-in-use with the macro-dynamics of culture and society. Video Games and Learning Professor: Richard Halverson

Official Website: Press Room April 25, 2013 Time Inc. today unveiled its third annual list of the 10 NYC Startups to Watch for 2013. The ten ventures will be recognized at Time Inc.’s Internet Week cocktail event on Wednesday, May 22nd. Each Spring, editors from Time Inc. brands, including TIME, FORTUNE, CNNMoney.com, PEOPLE, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle, comb New York's technology scene to discover the ten most promising startups of the past year. This year's diverse list spotlights New York City-based companies with the most potential to transform areas from shopping, personal health and dating to customer service, social media, and data analysis. “Each year, the temperature of NYC’s start-up scene seems to get turned up another five degrees, with 2013 yielding by far the largest number and widest spectrum of companies for our judging committee to consider,” says Time Inc. The honorees will be feted at what has become one of the flagship events of Internet Week New York.

SimCityEDU: Using Games for Formative Assessment Big Ideas Digital Tools Teaching Strategies SimCity As game-based learning gains momentum in education circles, teachers increasingly want substantive proof that games are helpful for learning. The game-makers at the non-profit GlassLab are hoping to do this with the popular video game SimCity. GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. “The big pain point we’ve heard from teachers is that they cannot entertain their kids to the level that they are being entertained outside of the classroom,” said Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab. “None of the other games are trying to do formative assessment to the level we are. [RELATED READING: Money, Time and Tactics: Can Games Be Effective in School?] SimCityEDU, funded by the Gates and Macarthur foundations, will provide assessments that are aligned with Common Core State Standards. Related

Kleiner Perkins Closes On $525 Million For Its 15th Venture Fund, ‘KPCB 15′ Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers is announcing this evening that it has closed on a $525 million round for its fifteenth venture fund, dubbed ‘KPCB 15.’ The fund will be headed up by 10 managing members: Mike Abbott, Chi-Hua Chien, Amol Deshpande, John Doerr, Bing Gordon, Wen Hsieh, Randy Komisar, Matt Murphy, Beth Seidenberg, and Ted Schlein. Longtime Kleiner Perkins investment partners Brook Byers, Ray Lane and Bill Joy are all notably off the list, which appears to confirm earlier reports that they will be declining their participation in future funds as part of a gradual general change in the partnership structure at the firm. Kleiner Perkins says it will focus the fund toward making investments in early-stage digital consumer and enterprise, green technology, and life sciences companies. $525 million is certainly big, but it’s not outsized given Kleiner Perkins’ history and the larger environment.

coding Before the Digital Gap Splits Further, Now is the Time for Computer Literacy Computer literacy is fast becoming an essential skill for jobs in the future, making it imperative that public schools learn to teach all kids to code, or risk putting some at a disadvantage later in life. Continue Reading Could Minecraft Be the Hook to Get Girls Interested in Coding? Girls love to play Minecraft as much as boys, a fact educators would like to use to interest them in coding more generally. Continue Reading Ali Partovi: Why Learning to Code Is Imperative In Public Education Ali Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, has an ambitious goal: To get public high schools to offer computer programming classes — not just as an elective, but as a science requirement. Continue Reading For One African American Student, Coding Is the Path to Success Students are “hacking” problems important to their everyday experience, like developing a simple app for women who feel harassed on the street. Continue Reading