In 1987, educational game developer Unicorn Software released a quaint little floppy disk tour of US history called All About America. Today, for the first time, All About America is playable online at the Internet Archive. It’s a quirky, sorta-glitchy look back at 80s gaming and how we viewed our nation’s history 31 years ago.
Made for the Apple II and other early personal computers, All About America comes on two 5.25-inch floppies, and teaches players with a combination of text and pixelated images. It takes them through 16 stories, starting with Columbus, through Lewis and Clark, noteworthy American inventions, and ending with space exploration and the idea that “someday, man may be able to travel from one planet to another.” It also includes quizzes and map-reading tests.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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