Where do educators discuss using Arduino in teaching to the under 19 year olds?

Look at the dates on the "most recent" threads in this part of the forum.

Do teachers USE Arduinos IN SCHOOLS? Or others, youth group leaders, Boy/ Girl Scouts, etc, etc?

If they do... where do they discuss their work??

You should try to contact Terry King, he sells arduino kits to schools a.o.
He visits this website regularly.

I've used Terry's YourDuino RoboRed controller and it is really nice. He has also written a lot of tutorials on using his starter kit. He's an excellent writer and served as the Tech Editor on the 2nd edition of my Beginning C for Arduino book. You can see some of his products and work at yourduino.com.

Terry's a nice man, gives generously of his time at this site. And I've no doubt his products are good, given the number of years he has been selling them. But the questions were...

Do teachers USE Arduinos IN SCHOOLS? Or others, youth group leaders, Boy/ Girl Scouts, etc, etc?

If they do... where do they discuss their work??

Maybe no educators visit this site even from time to time? Not even the "Education and Teaching" sub-forum? No one using Arduinos with kids? (Sad... terrible waste of an opportunity) Or not coming here? Wonder why not? Did they see it as problematic as the Playground has been of late? Why? Forum has always "worked", for me anyway. Nothing to say/ ask/ share?

Maybe no educators visit this site even from time to time?

While I'm retired, I taught for over 3 decades and I come here at least once or twice a week. I'd come more often but things don't change that often on this Forum. I'm also involved with a program that has high school students devise microcontroller-based experiments that end up flying in the International Space Station.

I visit the Programming Forum on a daily basis. I try to jump in when it seems appropriate and I don't want to appear to "self-marketing" either...a fine line, perhaps, but I believe in what I write. As to Terry, I think he does have experience in working with kids and I know he writes his tutorials so they are understandable at a wide level of experience.

I wouldn't mind knowing something about the experiences of other educators as well tkbyd, do tell me more about yours if you like.

As ex-janitor on a school for kids aged 6-12, I just volunteered for a new... fablab in my region.

The Fablab would like electronic-courses for kids aged 8-15, another volunteer and I have some knowledge of electronics/ideas, but we hardly know what to expect. I'm a bit afraid courses might be boring for kids with some knowledge while they might be far to difficult for some of the beginners. I'd very much like to make it an interesting event for who ever follows it.

I agree, this particular sub-forum is not getting a lot of traffic. I posted something just a few days ago and got zero replies :wink:

I've taught courses with arduino at my university. The thread I started was trying to share experience: how to help students run arduino IDE and boards on their own machines. Content-wise, different students will have different interests. So maybe pick a few things that are essential to them, such as basics of DC circuits, programming, and circuit labs, teach them the basics and then let them pick what they want next, some robotics with motors and sonic rangers, some flashing leds, IR remote stuff, or weather station type of data logging, or maybe internet of things etc.

I've been on this forum long enough to argue that this forum handles technical questions well, a lot better than education questions. So if you or your students have issues with your projects, we are here to help. Just post on the programming or electronics (and other relevant) sub-forums.

I'm an educator - grade 13 - so some of our students are under 19. Our students use Arduinos in Intro to Engineering lab, a project based, two semester course that is open to engineering majors and non-majors. They learn a couple basic circuits, and some C programming, then have the option to use an Arduino in their final project. They often do, usually with a small servo motor.

Hi We use Arduino's in schools here in the UK, we have just completed our first year course with 11-12 year olds.

The trickly bit is the Arduino IDE, great for people that know what they are doing.
I would recommend checking out CODEMAKR, it's free and was specifically built for this purpose.

jon

I teach at the middle school level and my plan, unless I can find something better, for the after school "Robotics and technology Club" is to start with the Lego robots then move on to the Arudino.

I am having them:

  1. Use the Lego Tutorial and work through all the lessons (about 9)
  2. Go online and find a lego-bot project and build it (they can stay at this level and just keep building lego-bots)
  3. Go through a select set of the Arudino tutorials
    3a. when doing this I want them to be able to tell be what the program is doing
    3b. I will explain the function of the components as they use them
  4. Build the arm on Lifehacker (there was no real reason for that arm over other arms, it is just one I saw and is cheap)

If anyone has better ideas, I would love to hear some

I think it would be a huge mistake to abandon the Arduino IDE using the argument it's too difficult to use. I know for a fact that you can teach the IDE in a one hour session to the point where students and solve a programming problem. In fact, a long time ago I discovered a different way to square a number:

The square of N is equal to the sum of N odd integers, starting with 1.

That is, if N = 3, then the square is 9 and is equal to 1 + 3 + 5, the first 3 odd integers. After introducing it to a mixed bag of students, the first student to solve the problem was an 11 year old, in about 5 minutes. True, he was unusual, but all of the students were able to program the IDE after only an hour of instruction.

So much of the discussion that has arisen (which doesn't actually address the thread topic, but that's okay, I guess!) hinges on...

What you are able (and willing) to spend on "materials".

In a perfect world, I would have lots of "stuff". But it isn't a perfect world, so I look for a balance between buying everything that might be useful or fun to trying to find the minimum spend that gives the maximum Things We Can Do.

Which brings me to the Arduino. Has done for years. For a certain level of programming/ electronics course for my pupils.

I am delighted to find so many chiming in with "11 year olds can do this." I fear that they are so often under-estimated, under-respected, under-served.

Of course, it must also be said that programming/ electronics isn't for everyone.... at any age level. As with the budgetary issues, a balance must be stuck between teaching enough to stretch the ones with the aptitude and intelligence, and teaching so much that you are now talking to just one of the children in the room. Sigh.

Hi,

Checkout CodeMakr (www.codemakr.net) Its a free teacher/pupil teaching site, used by quite a few schools now.

It's free due to the fact that the BBC's Microbit as come along making it unattractive to investors, so it was spun off to the community.

How delicious!! The mighty BBC tries to roll out a huge "drop money from helicopters" program... "Every Year 7 child to be GIVEN free computer". (Year 7 approx same as US Grade 7)

Was supposed to happen Oct 15.

And it hasn't. Do I smell government program?? GIVE EVERY CHILD A COMPUTER?? Oh, please.

But! You can BUY (about $20), NOW, a "thing" that is very like what the BBC/ government were planning (are planning) to spend taxpayer money "giving" away. ("Microbit") (And what percent of the given away toys will still be in the child's hands, being used, in 6 weeks?)

... you can buy one now.... a "Codebug", from:

... with support from...

(It doesn't have the accellerometer or magnetometer of the Microbit. It does have a battery powered option... lacking in Microbit, I believe, and can be interfaced with Arduino or Pi. (Not sure about Microbit... don't think so.)

But... they have to over-egg it, don't they? "Get started in ONE MINUTE!"... with something that you need to go online to program?? My web browser isn't OPEN in 60 seconds! Use it to monitor your Twitter accout? Well... yeah... you can use it as a beeper attached to a big computer attached to the internet... which could beep by itself, couldn't it?

BUT! Having complained about that, I will say that it could be a stepping stone to Arduinos for the hardware inclined, or Lazarus for the software inclined, and it ISN'T a government scheme to waste taxpayer money, so it must be GOOD!

I had a look at CodeMakr (www.codemakr.net)... promoted as free a few posts back by someone who has made 8 posts here.

It lets you have one lesson free... and then you have to BUY additional courses, if you want to proceed. And I couldn't find what those courses would cost.

It let's you program an Arduino!

Joking aside... for a hard pressed school, where they don't have someone on the staff who knows how to program, MAYBE this would be an answer to the idea that in secondary school "every child will learn two programming languages, one of them text based" (My recollection of something supposedly from Big Brother's manual of what every school must teach.)

If it gets kids using Arduinos, it can't be all bad!