Discovering the Micro:Bit

RE: Discovering the Micro:Bit

jharris1993 — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 10:34:07 GMT

Hi Rene! Welcome aboard.

I can't resist a quip about starting lists at zero instead of one as it reminds me of a signature I read recently:

"There are only 10 kinds of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't."

Don't worry about being an engineer. The fact that you're trying to get your students engaged in the STEM/Maker community is wonderful!

As far as what programming environment/language to use, the "blocky" language is a good starting point, but don't hesitate to encourage them to look "under the hood" at the underlying code. It's always interesting to ask the students to try to think of a better, simpler, and/or more elegant way to code a particular project.

In my own case, one of my first micro:bit programs was the ubiquitous "Magic 8-Ball" which is usually implemented as a long "if, else-if, else-if, else-if, (etc.)" construct. Though it works, it is (IMHO), ugly programming. I did some research and hand-edited the JavaScript to replace the if-then tree with a, (again IMHO), simpler switch-case structure.

Fairly soon on, you may want to introduce them to Python. Having a firm grasp of both JavaScript and Python won't do them any harm at all in the future and Python is the "default" language for many of the mini-controller boards.

Keep us posted!

Jim "JR"

RE: Discovering the Micro:Bit

rancell — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 09:37:35 GMT

You may be interested in a tool I wrote for downloading the files in Linux. I recommend getting the students to first learn how to download manually but if they find it tedious try my tool to speed things up.

RE: Discovering the Micro:Bit

jw0752 — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 04:27:35 GMT

Hi Rene,

I hope to follow your exploration of the Micro:bit. Learning is life and if you can give the gift of enjoying it to your students they will remember you as a great teacher.

John

RE: Discovering the Micro:Bit

mp2100 — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 03:48:34 GMT

First, its great that this blog post started with step 0. As opposed to step 1. I always try to start with step 0. ;-)

I see you begin with a disclaimer, “not an engineer”. I am an engineer, and I am so impressed with the micro:bit. Keep learning and playing. For its size and low price it’s an amazing computer. I bought one on sale, on a whim, and was so glad I did. The built-in sensors are useful. There’s a learning curve for programming, yes, but you can get results quickly. (Really too many choices of programming languag s to choose from. )

Let us know how it turns out.

RE: Discovering the Micro:Bit

genebren — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 00:11:09 GMT

Great to hear that you are taking your students with you on a journey in computing. This is a fun little device (I just bought one and am hoping to start playing with it soon). Hopefully you will get some happy makers moving on to bigger and better things and enjoying a path of learning and exploring.

Good luck!

Gene