I didn't bother to enter because my boss bought me a couple of club packs. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

these are great teaching tools and just plain fun.

I had a few robot chassis around so I built some custom motor drivers and made a joystick remote too

heres a little more info

https://commons.pratt.edu/open-source/microbit-brained-robots/

looking forward to reading your blogs.

Good luck with the school. you'll have a great time watching them play with the Microbits.

I had the kids at our library program robots with microbit brains. So far just using RF remote control. next we add line following capability.

Hi, I'm Kristoffer, a Firmware/Software Engineer, and recently ventured into building a tech startup here in Cebu, Philippines. I love tinkering with hardware as well as coding. Locally, I make steps in contributing anything I can in promoting STEAM Education in the Philippines. Together with other passionate volunteers, we created IoT Cebu { http://iotcebu.io/ }, a grassroots community of tinkerers, professionals, hobbyists, startups, etc. Recently, we also started The Things Network Cebu (TTN Cebu) {https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/community/cebu-city/ } as part of contributing to the community through technology.

As for teaching kids, this is very close to my heart. In fact, I'm planning to start a Code Club for kids. I always try to influence my sons to get interested in programming through our geeky projects. I would love to be able to introduce micro:bit to young learners here in Cebu, Philippines.

Here in our local community, I plan to bring young learners together to learn coding through micro:bit. There are a lot of kids playing games in internet cafes and I would like to encourage these kids to learn coding instead of just playing games all night. Further, our home is 5 minutes walking distance to my eldest son's school. I also plan to introduce micro:bit to Graders 4-6 at my son's school.

Who are you? What is your background as an educator?

We are a group of five community volunteers at our local library who are creating an opportunity starting with middle school students to learn to write code.  While there are currently 5 of us; we hope to recruit more volunteers as our program progresses.  Four of us are software engineers.  One has conducted a high school robotics program for several years, another has taught 3^rdgraders who to code through his company’s program.  The third hardware engineer has helped in a library STEM program this summer, focusing on aviation for middle school students.  The fourth software engineer manages an annual library Film Festival and is creating one just for school kids which will be active this fall.  The fifth person is a community volunteer who is organizing this effort and has taught high school and middle school for several years…many years ago.

How would you use these micro:bits to help others learn to code?

We are offering beginning coding workshops twice a month in Canby Oregon beginning in October 2018 and we hope that the program expands as interest grows. We have already filled up our first months of seats!

I'm professor of Physics at a public/federal university in a small city (population is 32 thousand) of Brazil, working with Physical Computing since 2015 with focus on sensors and IoT.

I've bought some BBC Micro:bits in the last 1-2 years to test and employ them on research projects using the builtin sensors (accelerometer and magnetometer), and in last semester one official course for graduating students (Physics and Geology) using a small quantity of BBC Micro:bits. All software development is done using MicroPython, as it is powerful and easier for the students, even without any previous knownledge of programming. I'have developed MicroPython drivers for external sensors connecting to BBC Micro:bit, like MAX44009 light sensor, AS7262/3 nano spectrometer, etc. Another contribution is the development of MicroPython scientific modules compatible with BBC Micro:bit (with only 9KB of free RAM !) for error propagation, statistics, signal processing, etc. See (https://github.com/rcolistete/).

My need and proposal to employ 10 more BBC Micro:bits :

- courses for large number of students (10-20), with 1 BBC Micro:bit for 1-2 students, so the interaction is improved, targetting university students (using MicroPython) and also young and low-income people (using Javascript Blocks and MicroPython) in non-profit organizations and public schools;

- development of more research projects with BBC Micro:bit using different sensors + IoT, applied to demonstrate live experiments at Physics classrooms and laboratories, sense seismic data (in Geophysics) from many BBC Micro:bit collected by using Bluetooth, low cost (tens of USD) nano-spectrometer + BBC Micro:bit with many of applications, low cost UV (ultraviolet) portable/wearable devices to help avoid skin cancer, etc;

- as a consequence of the above activities, develop more in MicroPython for BBC Micro:bit, publishing more FOSS software for drivers, scientific tools, etc.

I am a leader of an informal group of makers and educators based in Poland. Since 2014 I've taught workshops on electronics and coding to hundreds of people in all sorts of setups ranging from one-day gatherings to large educational programmes running for months. I have taken my classes abroad to Barcelona and Singapore, mentored students at hackathons (including MedHacks, the largest medical hackathon in the US), ran my own hardware hackathons as well, and spoke at events and meetups in Shanghai and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I have worked in diverse contexts including huge government-run science centres, small alternative schools and self-organized hack nights in people's private apartments. For the year 2019, me and my team are preparing to run classes in several European and Southeast Asian countries, mainly focused on Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, robotics and rapid prototyping.

It would be a great opportunity for us to expand the class cirricula to include the micro:bit, which we have not worked with yet. Our aim is to present the boards to adults as well as children, as to our recognition, the micro:bit is one of the most advanced educational platforms for visual programming, and the Micro Python capability looks very promising as well - it's certainly not only for kids, and plenty of adults want to learn as well. The whole ecosystem is very complete and coherent, a huge advantage for training more educators to use the boards in their classes.

We are mainly interested in micro:bit's applications in robotics and wearables, as we have amassed a portfolio of projects in those fields and hope to do a lot more in the future. We collaborate with plenty of artists and teachers whom we would like to invite to create scenarios for project-centred lessons. Presently our focus is on addressable LEDs, in the form of rings, strips, panels and flexible sheets. Being colorful and shiny, they are loved by the children, at the same time being a safe educational resource providing instant reward. Among other features, we would like to combine the LEDs with the micro:bit's accelerometer and compass to encourage kids and adults as well to create unique visual effects with spatial awareness capabilities. A long-term goal is then to take those installations to Southeast Asia and run workshops in underpriviledged communities, as we got several requests from such groups and had to turn them down in the past for lack of resources.

Hello.

I am G. Karthick Kumar Reddy an educator and my role is to mentor the students in the Physics subject. As Science is the subject which deals with the learning concepts to educate, rethink and perform activities for thorough understanding by students on the earth environmental and its dynamical role in day to day life. As a Physicist, I would like my students to learn the concepts of Physics like Light, Sound, Heat, Fluid flows, mechanics, dynamics, etc. When I was dealing a concept on temperature and its impacts on the earth, one of my student asked me a question that “How do the earth temperature is going to effect the human life?” This shows how the young minds are thinking about the concepts more. As an educator, I would like to make them to understand the concepts of Physics practically by using the latest technology IoT hardware kits like Micro:Bit.

The micro: bit kit is used to measure the environment parameters like temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed. These parameters are most commonly controlled the dynamics of global wind circulations, weather changes, plants and crop growth control, energy generation, etc. All this concepts can be well understand with the data collected from the Digital sensors like temperature, humidity, pressure, accelerometer, magnetometer which are interfaced to the Micro:bit via additional Arduino MCU kit.

My present aim is to conduct a practical awareness for students how to monitor the environmental parameters using the Micro:bit kits out of 10 kits, each kit is given to a team of three students and ask them to collect data while they are going to home. After collecting data my role is to explain them how the temperature is showing variations at various places at different time. Te coding to the Micro:bit can be a best learning concept to the students. In the next case if they want to measure in remote area they can design the robotic toy and can be controlled using the Smartphone app.

This experiment is conducted in agriculture areas, forests, industrial areas, cities, villages, etc. to understand better how the temperature is changing at different places. I hope this kit will be useful for students in schools, colleges, universities to study the concepts of Science. It also helps the educators like me to teach and make them to understand the concepts practically. As I am a well experienced in programming in C, C++, Java, Phyton in Arduino IDEs, Energia, Keil, Cube 32 IDEs and hardware IOT devices like Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison, Arduino 101, etc kits the micro:bit be a suitable IoT device for students in my opinion.

I am a middle school STEM/Technology Educator. I have been using and teaching with micro:bits for a couple of school years in the classroom, at after-school clubs, at summer camps, and at educator professional development sessions. I have also used numerous micro:bit accessories, including those by Adafruit and Pimoroni. The micro:bit is an absolutely amazing tool to teach engineering, design, STEM, and computer science to new technology learners. I would love to use a micro:bit Club pack to help more of my students participate in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development micro:bit Challenge. I have a couple of micro:bits on-hand now, but would love to give this opportunity to more of my students. You can learn more about our classroom/makerspace blog at mmslaunchlab.com.

Thanks for the opportunity!

My name is Roberta and I'm an Associated Professor at the Computer Science Department of a Brazilian Federal University (since 2006).

For about 8 years, I've been coordinating a project that consists on offering free introductory programming courses to state school students that are socially deprived, in our region.  One of our goals is to attract young people to the IT area, as in Brazil (as all around) we are facing an important shortage of IT professionals. Besides, we're trying to empower these students through an effective digital inclusion.

As part of the introductory programming course, we organise a number of "Hacking days" in order to motivate the students with more practical programming activities. Currently, we use different software or technologies in the Hacking days, like Scratch, Web Design and Robotics with Arduino. With Micro:bit, the idea is to replace what we've been using and exclusively employ Micro:bit as the platform for all the Hacking days, with different programming contents and challenges.

My name is Ausencio, I belong to a group of engineers called "Los Hijos del Rey Arduino",  we are in facebook  https://www.facebook.com/HijosDelReyArduino , and in youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPIfKy0iwag&t=30s we have experience in middle and high school, in physics, mathematics and programming. Actually i am teaching Robotics using Arduino, specifically in Mexico City at Colegio de Bachilleres 15.

My plan is to substitute Arduino with Microbit in robotics laboratory.

We are very interested in Microbit because powerful hardware and simplicity in programming. Microbit has embedded various sensors and actuators, and we are enthusiast to use it in Robotic Practices.

We have been working with Arduino in classroom since 3 years ago, and since 5 months ago we have been studying Microbit hardware and its programming. For teaching purposes we find Microbit  more complete and easier to use. We have experience in developing lab material for Arduino and we have the enthusiasm to  do it for Microbit.

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