Hi, my name is Marek.

I'm an Msc(Eng) with over 20 years experience in HVAC industry. I conduct R&D projects focusing automation

and metering systems in big energy company in Poland. Besides, privately, I'm electronic enthusiast at all.

Thanks to cooperation with University of Technology I work with students. It gave me quite wide didactic skills.

My role in these projects is supervising of  learning programme preparation and support of students learning path.

These projects focused mainly on automation of energy systems but the idea of robotics is also considered.

Another field of activity and supporting of students projects are metering systems, targeting to introduction of smart metering solutions.

Well, Well, I’m talking about matured students but micro:bit is addressed to younger, just beginners of coding, 

carefully entering in realm of programming and robotics … wrong! - not at all careful - but with children's passion and enthusiasm,

voraciously and chaotic but with great charm… and rumor as well. The only caution is required of the teacher to not spoil student’s original rush to gain knowledge.

Quite serious task isn’t it?

Frankly I’m ready to fulfill these requirements as I cooperate with small school helping in informatic lessons.

But my strongest reference are my robotic projects we prepare with my daughters.

Our humble “lab” is perfect electronic/ robotic kindergarten

Here you can see my last roadtest report dedicated to Ti Robotics System Learning Kit accompanied with complete classroom curriculum.

https://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews/2777/l/ti-robotic-systems-learning-kit-ti-rslk-review.

Although it is intended for older students, some experiments and “classes” were conducted together with my child’s.

It was an extraordinary experience indeed! On the picture below you can see our attempt to combine “raw” Ti robotic system

with “toy - like” but likewise advanced Lego Mindstorm system.

The Project

Participants: group of children 9-15y.

Formula: after school classes

The micro:bit kit project for my students is relative simple but effective in my opinion.

Theory isn’t bad!:

We will start with short introduction in the realm of electricity, electronic and robotic as well.

Multimedia presentation and some examples from my drawer, would be helpful (I hope not to bore the group for a start).

Then we will identify the contents of the box.

I plan to select and explain few examples from the manual.

First experiment we will conduct together after that children would be ready to act more independently.

The group will benefit from programming skills and will now become familiar with “hardware”.

Probably I would introduce my favourite example - led chaser - very simple to code but impressive indeed!

I prefer projects involved students working together. Simple communication examples seem to be perfect.

Is micro:bit  Scratch compatible? Yes, Great!!! my students love Scratch !!! let’s use it.

Final project:

Every student then would consider (with my support) the final project

- it could be selected example from manual/ something from internet (https://microbit.org/ideas/ is the great resource!) or individual child's project (my favourite idea).

Completion:

And a great exhibition of robots with the presentation of children's designs for parents, teachers and colleagues - a great robotic show.

Thank you for the great support of education in the field of IT and electronic.

Marek

Hello, nice to meet you...

My name Abdian Putra Primana, I am 25 years old and bachelor degree of Electronic Engineering Education from University of Malang. I proud could to be part from this chance. I am a teachers in one of the Vocational High School in Kediri, East Java, Indonesia. This year is my third year to teach there especially in Electrical Installation Class and Samsung Technical Institute Class. Some of my activity in the school is teaching about electrical installation, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Inverter, HMI, SCADA, and Arduino / micro:bit. In Arduino, I share and teach about how to give knowledge in microcontrollers easily. There are with give material start from basic with Blinking LED, Keypad, LCD Display, Sensor, and control DC Motor. I meet with my student from first year and second year every Friday. So, i give that material once a week and continuously until 2 years for each level year student. They are so interest about that topic that I give because itu contain with new kind design to control output easily using Arduino IDE. They are feel curious because every code in the program it easy to understand for each step and some level type code start from simple until complex. So, it makes them improve their skill about coding and also about wiring more. Now, we prepare to join about South East Competition of South East Asia area especially in Internet of Things and Smart School. We hope could get some wonderful experience to learn about micro:bit more to increase our knowledge in the school especially for teacher and student in the liniar competency. Thank you for your attention and nice to join this chance.

I am Liz. I work in a K-8 school with students that love new challenges - especially STEM related! We have a Maker's Space which is used by the entire building and where these could be available for many students. After a morning of teaching sixth grade social studies and language arts, as well as first grade math the end of my day includes a homeroom with students grades 6 - 8. Finding new STEM challenges for this group of students is where I would use these products. My daughter is a junior in high school. Her IT instructor is looking for a volunteer to lead an all girls coding club. This would be a great way to utilize these for her age group as well.

I'm a software developer and a volunteer in a CoderDojo (in Italy). I started as mentor in 2013 and became champion in 2015. Mentorship experience allowed me to teach coding and robotics in school STEAM projects. I'm also a local ambassador of Europe Code Week.

I plan to use micro:bit in our CoderDojo labs. We have one lab (called dojo) every month for 10 months in one year (as the school period).

This month we will have the 33th dojo with about 150 ninjas (childrens from 7y to 14y) as the past events.

I would to start a new ninja class (with 15 ninjas) in our CoderDojo labs using micro:bit to stabilize coding concepts and hopefully start to learn robotics principles.

TIA,

Carlo

My name is Kim Gahn and I work as a substitute teacher at multiple schools located on US military bases in Okinawa, Japan.  I have been involved with afterschool robotics clubs using the Lego Mindstorms.  I am currently also studying for a degree as a physics teacher and also possess an associates degree in computer programming.  My goal is to work with kids of all ages in a STEM program.  If chosen for the giveaway, I would collaborate with various classroom teachers to integrate the micro : bit kits into an applicable lesson.  I also am an active member of a coding club at the base library which caters to members of the community of all ages and coding ability, and I would like to work with the library manager to facilitate a community workshop for children using this tech.

Whether or not I am chosen, this is a really cool giveaway, and I appreciate your company giving teachers an opportunity to see what kids can do with it:)

Thank you,

Kim

I/we are Meshed - a Social Enterprise that collaborate with other groups to engage in community outreach work, particularly related to STEaM, education (young & old), Makers & MakerSpaces.

We foster opportunities and helping to inspire youngsters to pursue passions in technology, and helping adults who are seeking new vocations who may be displaced by growing automation or looking for new opportunities & interets.

We do not consider ourselves as educators, but rather facilitators, helping to bring opportunities for Peer-to-Peer learning.

Due to our own backgrounds & experiences, we have a strong tech paradigm, but working in the Makers-community has us looking beyond, at ways to augment & diversify those interests, be that design (i.e. 3D printing, Laser cutting), textiles (wearables, cosplay), media (stop-motion, music), environments (upcycle), food, transport, housing, etc

Bought a few micro:bit for evaluation, along with Adafruit Playground Express & stock Arduino. Playground Express is a little outside the price-point we're comfortable with & stock Arduino has too steep a learning-curve, so those are more appropriate later on.

micro:bit seems ideal for entry-level - youngsters & adults new to the subject - and is appealing since it supports scratch-like blocks, Python & JavaScript, so can grow into more complex systems.

Been running Code Club workshops for kids, so this may form a foundational part of the sessions, and move onto tangential topics indicated above: wearables, robotics (IoT or looking at ways to bootstrap Sumobot Jr on this) & design (3D print/cut cases, toy housing, etc)

I am a high school teacher (in computer science) in Italy and a proud member of Coder Dojo Lucca.
I also held training courses for teachers on educational robotics and coding (from primary school up to high school).

I never used Microbits but i had experience with Arduino and Makey Makey (and some robotic kit as LEGO Mindstorm and mBot).

I would really appreciate the opportunity to participate in micro:bit program.
I would use Microbit both with my school students and with teachers n my teachers' training.

Hi community!

I am embedded software engineer with 15+ years experience, a dad of two bright boys and volunteering teacher at Russian weekend school here at Basingstoke, Hampshire,  where together with other teachers we are helping Russian speaking children to keep practicing their mother tong while learning math, science, art and ...coding. So for I was teaching them algorithms using Python and ir was very well received.  After I showed them a small self-driving robot( and old RC car + microbit) they were so impressed that asked me to show them how to program robots. At this time the support from element14 would be more than welcome as it the time has come and everyone back to school Time to learn physical computing and show to the world how smart it can be with your youngest and brightest!

P.S. First lesson just finished (last weekend) with huge success but only one pair of microbits were shared with students. We definitively need more to let everyone opportunity to touch the future.

And last but not least...here is how it was (please let me know if photos are not permitted):

BR

Alexey Bulgakov

We totally love Micro:bit,  I´m Gus Merckel, program Director in Jacaranda Education, our NGO that works with technology and english in more than 10 different communities, from Indigenous communities in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico to urban communities with high crime rate like Tijuana, Monterrey and Culiacán.

For example  we created 4 community makerspace, like the Innovamakerspace in Monterrey, where the members of the club are developing their own Arcades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOZ4Z5wXXtM , we also created more than 40 3D printers for 40 different schools with the project Tinker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2oL5FOSMy0&t=9s . Right now we are working more and more to create new community makerspaces around Mexico, specially in communities like Tenejapa, an indigenous community in Chiapas: https://youtu.be/rN7bpni0-t4 .

We have been using Arduino UNO and Raspberry Pi for a lot of our tech courses, but we think that it is not ideal for our communities, because:

• We need to get extra electronics like LED, Buttons and so on, which are rare if not imposible to get in some of our communities.
• Learning code to do physical computing is very hard when you go straight to coding Arduino or Python.

That´s why we would like to start a pilot program with the community of Tamazulapan, Oaxaca with the Micro:bits and compare the results to the groups learning with Arduino and/or Pi. The program in this community started this September and we would be teaching an introduction course in October, having results by the end of november.

We think that micro:bit could help our community makerspaces to have a easier and funnier way to start their way into the maker world!

Cheers,

Gus

Hi Daniel - I run the Roanoke Robotics and Makers Club, a no fee non profit club supporting the local library system, schools, summer camps, and community events with STEM classes and exhibits in making and coding. I am a retired electrical engineer, whom with my eclectic group of retired/senior colleagues, enjoy passing the torch to the next generations of engineers and technologists..

When I was growing up, nearly everyone learned to throw a baseball and ride a bike. It was a basic learned skill that stays with you for your whole life.

Coding needs to be a similar life skill. You may not grow up to be a software engineer specifically, but coding and SW is something everyone is familiar with,and not afraid of.  If the exposure leads to a vocation, all the better !

We would use the microbit giveaway kits to inspire the community for coding, starting with a continuing coding series at our libraries for teaching the teachers, and also the students.