Robotics Competition

Keepad Interactive will be at the iNexus National Robotics competition at Curting University on the 5th of December. Not only will we be bringing our robots for kids to play with and program, we will also be supplying Turningpoint Keepads for the audience to vote for their favorite robot in the competition. So if you, your family or your class is interested in seeing some amazing robots head down to Curtin next Saturday.

For more details and to register go to http://scieng.curtin.edu.au/current/robotics.cfm

Free Robot Voice Maker

So you have bought and Ed-e, you have programed some moves, you have downloaded them into Ed-e but it needs something else - he can walk but he can't talk.

Now you could just use your own voice but it would be much more fun if he had a robot voice. For that you are going to need a vocoder.



I've looked around and most vocoders are either hardware (analogue) or plugins for synthesisers like pro tools and the like. I finally found a stand alone vocoder - Zerius, and it's free.



Record your voice (use the basic recorder in windows accessories - save it as a mono not stereo) - thats your modulator file.
Choose a carrier - the carrier files are tones or noise, this is what effects your voice
and give the output file a name and a location - this is what gets saved.

Download your output file into Ed-e, assign a key press from the remote and now he talks with the robot voice.

You can also do your Daft Punk impression now - Harder, better, faster, stronger! (couldn't resist!)

So much to tell you!

Very busy weekend - did a public demonstration of Ed-e at Scitech on the weekend and during some down time found a whole heap of resources so it's going to be a list today.

www.storylineonline.com - Popular picture/storybooks read by famous actors and with excellent multimedia and subtitles

http://www.brightstorm.com/ - Videos for high school mathematics, liturature and writing - for those who need the visual and aural.

http://www.samanimation.com/ stop motion animation the easy way.

www.yacapaca.com - LMS hosted for free.

Schoology - LMS hosted for free

Pixton - comic creator

vozme.com - online text to speech.

Kidsspell.com - online games based on spelling lists

animasher - easy animation with your own media

Myths and legends - stories and online software to create your own.

Creative kids central - Classical music lessons and interactives


Have a play with this lot - see what you think.

Time to catch up with a few things....

Image by Luke Redmond via Flickr

I feel like my feet have hit the ground for the first time this week. I was at the "Leading a Digital School" conference on the Gold Coast from Wednesday to Saturday - It was great but with presenting workshops, being on the stand and Co MC'ing the quiz night - I was exhausted by the time I got back to Perth... Thank goodness for my new iPhone for the six hour plane ride (thanks boss).

For one of my workshops / presentations I used a new web 2.0 tool called prezi - Prezi breaks the traditional slide based presentation model and is more based on a messy concept map with pathways to move through. So you can explore topics as they come up - or give it to people to explore themselves. Speaking of which - here is the one I used at the conference.

Our product line up has increased as well with an agreement with RM for both software and hardware - The coolest being the new Ed-e Robot. He certainly got a lot of attention at the conference and even danced at the quiz night on the main screen.

We also now have access to all the software the RM carry including podium - pod casting software simplified for primary students.

Last thing - echalk (the computer teachers listserv) has been buzzing about Greenfoot, a java programming environment for kids. I just had a look at it and it seems that I'm going to have to download and play with it because it looks really cool.

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