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I've done a few things in area elementary schools and school
carnivals and a Durham library but mostly helping kids play with "<a
href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/">Squishy
Circuits</a>" (and "Banana Piano", but IMO that's not at all
relevant to this topic). <br>
<br>
But my cohorts showed the kids how to play with <a
href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> (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 "<a
href="https://www.google.com/search?q=raspberry+pi+scratch+gpio+projects&oq=raspberry+pi+scratch+gpio+projects&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.13625j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=raspberry+pi+scratch+gpio+projects">raspberry
pi scratch gpio projects</a>" there's a lot of stuff available to
help shorten the learning curve.<br>
<br>
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)<br>
<br>
-Pete<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/24/2015 03:19 PM, jonathan
hunsberger wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAJWx4YjZHgE9V4cTJ4tTHXX2YmMZW63LYTvC5h_igJCOtupg=w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi all,
<div>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:</div>
<div>1. Talk about ways that some level of coding skills can be
useful even when you aren't a software developer for a living.
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks!</div>
</div>
<br>
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