[TriEmbed] Middle school presentation

[jonathan hunsberger]

Hi all,
I'm pretty much an embedded n00b, lurking on the list to learn some things
(pretty successful in that so far!)  I work in IT, doing systems
engineering / infrastructure architecture, but when my daughter's Computer
Skills (mostly typing, plus a little bit of other stuff, including "hour of
code") teacher found out I was a "computer person", she wanted me to come
talk to the class about writing code.  I am not a software developer, but
like most people I do write a lot of scripts, etc. to make my job easier.
And at home my latest free time sink has been playing with
microcontrollers, etc.  So.. I had two ideas:
1. Talk about ways that some level of coding skills can be useful even when
you aren't a software developer for a living.
2. Talk about how you can use code to do things "in the real world" with
all of the easily-accessible microcontrollers that are on the market these
days.

Kind of leaning toward the second one since it seems more like playing than
working.  For kids who have just come out of "hour of code" and maybe a few
hours of codecademy, I was thinking it might be cool just to bring in an
Arduino and some common peripherals (sensors, LEDs, etc.) and show how easy
it is to quickly get something working using SparkFun/AdaFruit tutorials
and running/modifying example sketches that come with the Arduino IDE.
Generally show them how accessible it can be and give them the basic info
about getting started with it if it is interesting to them.

Have any of you done anything like that?  Does anyone have advice on
specific things to demonstrate, ways to organize the presentation, etc.?
This would be for middle school students.  6th grade for sure, not sure
about 7th and 8th.

Thanks!
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