[TriEmbed] Middle school presentation

[Alan Smith]

Thanks to Rob for pinging me.   I don't do a very good job with keeping up
with all of the discussion on the list.

I am indeed the "guy" that has done the insanely cheap introduction to
Arduino.   We use it for our "take our children to work day" where i teach
it to 12 and up children that come.   It is amazing to watch students that
have never done programming before realize they can do this. :-)

I also have a 102 that I teach now that adds on an LCD, a speaker, and in
one day the students make a countdown timer, a stop watch, and a game
clock.

In addition, there is a book I wrote for teaching middle schoolers that is
available online for free at: http://www.introtoarduino.com/

I'll be happy to help in any way that I can!



On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 1:45 AM, Robert Mackie <rob at mackies.org> wrote:

> Unless I'm mistaken, this "guy" is a wake robotics FLL coach. He ran a
> workshop like this for our members a while back.
>
> Let me know if you'd like me to see if I can put you in touch with him.
> Maybe he is on the list - I'm not sure.  I am sure he's built a really nice
> framework for introducing programming the arduino.
>
> Rob.
>
> On Jan 24, 2015 5:00 PM, "Shane Trent" <shanedtrent at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Slightly different approach but I was impressed when I read about this
> effort (Raleigh guy too, might be on the list) to show kids how to blink an
> LED on a tiny cheap board. I suspect you could raise enough donations to
> build enough for a classroom.
> >
> > https://learn.sparkfun.com/blog/1193
> >
> > Shane
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Pete Soper <pete at soper.us> wrote:
> >>
> >> I've done a few things in area elementary schools and school carnivals
> and a Durham library but mostly helping kids play with "Squishy Circuits"
> (and "Banana Piano", but IMO that's not at all relevant to this topic).
> >>
> >> But my cohorts showed the kids how to play with Scratch (which comes
> preinstalled as part of Raspbian Linux for RPI these days). If I were going
> to do something like you're talking about, and could put a little time into
> it I'd jumper a Raspberry Pi to a solderless breadboard with a few LEDs and
> piezo beeper, et al on it and use Scratch, show the kids how to use it,
> then stand back and watch. If you google "raspberry pi scratch gpio
> projects" there's a lot of stuff available to help shorten the learning
> curve.
> >>
> >> I'm semi-confident somebody on this list would be glad to loan you an
> RPI for a reasonably limited time to facilitate this. I've got extra
> breadboards, LEDs, beepers, and six other things that could be used for
> this that you're welcome to borrow. (My RPIs are either tied up or the old,
> 1/4gb RAM flavor)
> >>
> >> -Pete
> >>
> >>
> >> On 01/24/2015 03:19 PM, jonathan hunsberger wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 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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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > A blog about some of my projects.  http://fettricks.blogspot.com/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org
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