The advantage of Arduino is that you can tap into the wisdom of a big community. You can invite people to explain, assist from that community. And share your results with the community.
Having that integrated is key IMHO. Jan -- Jan H Wildeboer | EMEA Open Source Affairs | Office: +49 (0)89 205071-207 Red Hat GmbH | Mobile: +49 (0)174 33 23 249 Technopark II, Haus C | Fax: +49 (0)89 205071-111 Werner-von-Siemens-Ring 11 -15 | 85630 Grasbrunn | _____________________________________________________________________ Reg. Adresse: Red Hat GmbH, Technopark II, Haus C, Werner-von-Siemens-Ring 11 -15 85630 Grasbrunn, Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Muenchen HRB 153243 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Brendan Lane, Charlie Peters, Michael Cunningham, Charles Cachera _____________________________________________________________________ GPG Key: 3AC3C8AB Fingerprint: 3D1E C4E0 DD67 E16D E47A 9564 A72F 5C39 3AC3 C8AB ----- Original Message ----- From: tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org <tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org> To: tos@teachingopensource.org <tos@teachingopensource.org> Sent: Wed Feb 17 08:58:25 2010 Subject: Re: [TOS] Teaching Programming in High School > BTW: In our first meeting I mentioned to him the > Arduino boards and he was not familiar with them. > He has been using PIC processors for a while it > seems, but was not very happy with the fact that > their software has restrictive licenses. The AVR uses ANSI standard C (so you can use gcc and make and your normal good ol' FOSS toolchain) and might make a nice PIC alternative, though it requires the same amount of extended concentration and grit-your-teeth willingness to debug. Processing and the Arduino are much easier to explain and get started with. Ladyada has a nice Arduino tutorial at http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/, and Leigh Honeywell gave a talk at OnLinux last year about using the Arduino to hack with even the smallest of children - video at http://onlinux.ca/node/151. If you want to bridge into hardware hacking, "Physical Computing" is a nice book. But like Matt said, electronics can be Hard To Debug. (Heck, software can be that way too, for that matter.) So making sure you test the setup is important - or maybe have the "master setup" itself at school, and the students doing their work on paper (so they have to think through the design of the program) and able to borrow units to use at home (but as a bonus, not as a standard expectation). One of my favorite intro-to-programming books (The Little Schemer) doesn't need a computer at all. And a +1 to robots. Robots robots robots! If you're trying for a "lift the hood" experience, maybe intro programming is not the way to start, and the goal should be to motivate students to take an intro programming class next - what if you taught them how to find and modify the source code for programs they already use? So, homework like "can you figure out how to make this Firefox menu say "Cheeseburger" instead of "Options"? or "change the color of your racing car from blue to red." Along the way, they'll have to learn to puzzle their way through unfamiliar code, and you can point out "this is an if-else statement, you may see it later in CS classes..." on-the-fly as they encounter it and need to know it in order to figure stuff out, but you don't have to worry about full topic coverage ("oh no we didn't get to while loops"). Just thinking out loud. --Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
