Geeks out of the Box – Page 107 – Geeks out of the box

This is a blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. We write this blog together, share their projects and thoughts on their journey towards self-dicovery. They’re growing up in a supportive non-coercive learning environment. We deeply believe in interest-based, self-paced education and have had to move countries to make this possible as a family. Visit Simon’s website at https://simontiger.com/ We are a family from Amsterdam who moved to Antwerp because homeschooling is illegal in The Netherlands. This blog started as https://antwerpenhomeschooling.wordpress.com in March 2016. Over the years, most of our entries have gravitated towards exploring together with Simon as he has developed an insatiable passion for programming, math and science. His sister Neva is treading on his heals. We changed or name to Geeks of the Box in May 2021.

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016

Physics with SparkFun

Simon has discovered yet another awesome resource: SparkFun, comprising a variety of projects electronics and coding based on Arduino, Intel Edison, Raspberry Pi and more. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials In this video Simon explains … Continue reading Physics with SparkFun

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016October 3, 2016

A couple more Scratch projects

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016October 3, 2016

Good old Spektro

Simon suddenly pulled his Spektro set from the shelf again. One more proof that he does occasionally return to the basics to fill in the gaps. Repeating the experiment he … Continue reading Good old Spektro

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016October 3, 2016

JavaScript

Next to the c++ in Arduino Simon is also trying to learn some JavaScript from the SAM app. He finds JavaScript more difficult.

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016October 3, 2016

Flow of autonomous learning and creativity

Every morning Simon smiles at me and says: “It’s morning!” That means he can get back to his projects and doesn’t have to stay in bed anymore. Friday morning he … Continue reading Flow of autonomous learning and creativity

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016

The Elusive Liquid Crystal Display

Simon tried to program the Arduino liquid crystal display for the first time last weekend. First the code kept giving an error, it took us more than an hour to find … Continue reading The Elusive Liquid Crystal Display

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016

Learning Process

So how does Simon teach himself to program? He starts by copying open source codes from, for example, the Arduino manual. The code is available in short excerpts. While copying … Continue reading Learning Process

By Geeks out of the Box October 3, 2016

Some slices of Mandarin

Here are a couple of impressions of Simon’s progress in Chinese, all filmed in September:

By Geeks out of the Box September 22, 2016September 22, 2016

SAM

Simon has discovered this new tool called SAM https://www.samlabs.com and has been studying their free app for hours, creating a variety of circuits online and trying to write code. He would … Continue reading SAM

By Geeks out of the Box September 22, 2016September 22, 2016

Bigger than Saturn

Tonight a little miracle happened. We have finally managed to see Saturn! And Mars! All thanks to a very special man, Robert Matheus of the Antwerp observatory Urania. Robert has … Continue reading Bigger than Saturn

By Geeks out of the Box September 20, 2016

Latest Piano Picks

This one is such a joy to see, especially considering Simon has learned it within a week. In the following video Simon plays a piece composed by a 9 year … Continue reading Latest Piano Picks

By Geeks out of the Box September 20, 2016September 20, 2016

Disco!

It’s been a great weekend with our Amsterdam friends. We visited two households and at both Simon was given workshops by advanced users of synth software and hardware. He was … Continue reading Disco!