I am a Belgian language teacher (English as a second language) and I have a group of 25 science students under my wing, age 16-17. One teaching period per week, I challenge them with a 'scientific English' class. For next semester, I have a small budget and I have decided to set up a challenging project for them involving the Raspberry Pi 2. The goal is double: learning scientific and technical English in an implicit way and learning to work with the Pi. So now I have two teams of 4 students, as turned out, it's boys versus girls, who will be competing in this challenge. Both teams will have access to a Raspberry Pi2 + Sense HAT.
This is going to be the challenge: "Program and develop a working prototype of a recycling machine that can separate plastic water bottles from metal cans, using the Raspberry Pi 2 minicomputer and the Pi Sense HAT."
They (and I!) are completely new to Raspberry Pi, and the challenge is setting up the Pi 2, learning to use the Sense HAT, solving the recycling problem (how can the Sense HAT be used to recognize plastic bottles from metal cans), and then developing a working prototype of a machine that will separate one from the other. The 8 students will be asked to create an element 14 account and use the element 14 website as their main portal where they can look up information and ask for help.
Yep, I kind of dive into this blindly, so any advice is welcome!
Ivan Lietaert
Sint-Aloysiuscollege Menen, Belgium
