I am teaching special education students at a Title 1 school in southern California.  I have been learning coding and programming to teach to my students both in my classroom and in an after school program at my church.  My students at school love the coding and are always after me to learn more.  I believe that this product would be most helpful for my students to be able to learn more.  My students have been learning the basics of circuits and how they work and looking at combining them with coding projects.  Winning Micro:bits to use in both the classroom and the after school program would take the lessons my students have started to learn to the next level.  You never know where a student with special needs are going to end up.  But giving them skills that they can use beyond the classroom is always a safe bet.

Thanks for listening

Barbara Stachelski

I am graduated engineer ( Dipl-Ing.(FH) in Information Technology, experienced with microcontroller and embedded software design ( 8-bit Z80, 8051 / C16, Atmel, 68K / Coldfire, ARM,..) since 30 years. I am used to do public educational speeches at barcamps, in front of college/university students.

As freelancer, I am going to extend my repertoire in the field of Internet-Of-Things / Industry 4.0 / SmartHome / SmartCity ) applications with the most simple approach, rapid prototyping on educational level, e.g. e.g. building-block programming langages like Scratch, Snap, code generators generating code from graphical design  or domain-specific languages), using agile approach.  I am also a "Pythonist" ( e.g. I held a workshop on the EUROPython 2014 ), and know that Pythons is right to be the #1 educational language, also as option for micro:bit embedded systems.

That the domain expert - the pupil, kid / minor, or even adult - is able to define the basic algorithm of a service and understands the design, and not just the "engineer", is the base for agile development by definition.

To gain the necessary experience to develop a "professional service offer", I would like to use one of the offered raffle tools. As "test partner" I have the youngest son of an engineering buddy, who already has some experience with Mindcraft and Scratch.

My name is Richmond, I'm from Mexico, currently a college student, president of the IEEE upiita student branch and compulsive maker

Each year we organize an event about robotics ("guerra de robots"), and we offer free courses for all the kids, although we've managed to do this for about two years, it would be amazing to have this micro:bit kits available, we have the personal (college volunteers and one person that is specialized with kids and education) all year round, but sometimes we don't have the resources to pull of a course of  electronics and programming like we would like to.

with your help we would be able to keep open the course all year, thus allowing us to refine our knowledge of the platform and the needs of the kids.

one of our goals as a student branch is to promote and advance technology for the well being of our country and the world

thanks for reading my comment, cheers

My name is Tom and I teach a class called FLITE. Fundamentals Learned Through Innovation, Technology, and Exploration. I was an engineer in my early career but hated it. I decided to go to school to teach elementary students instead. I have loved every second of it. In my current classroom we learn 3D design and how to make things that will change our lives for the better. We code from Kindergarten to fifth grade. By fifth my students are building full working Android apps. We build and program VEX robotics in addition to using Ozobots and Coji's. My most recent purchases are Parrot mini drones to block code through certain situations in the classroom. About half of all of that is purchased by me for my students. I feel it is worth every penny to expose them to these great learning tools.

I would love to get their hands on some Microbits to see what they can do with them. Looking at the Microsoft curriculum I get many ideas on how to use them. I want to get into wearables with my students and I think programming and making the rock, paper, scissors bands would be awesome. Kids love to make and wear. Scrolling messages, game controllers, and the use of servos excites me. The servos are very inexpensive and we could make so much more happen with them. I plan to use the Microbits from Kindergarten to fifth grade for many different learning experiences.

Thank you for the chance to win these beauties!

Hi, i am a coderdojo champion, we arr running free afterschool classes in the library and the periferic school charecterised by low income multietnical population for the last 3 years. We  use variouse free resourse to make the curriculum stimulating, we have 2 microbits as  it is great to show the connection between virtual and physical worlds. We would greatly to give a possibility to kids to have more access to microbits as we belive that is a great resourse !

thanks

My name is James E. Cole.  I have not been in the classroom for a long time, but I still have two lifetime teaching credentials for grade level 13 and 14.  My plan is to start a coding club for children in my neighborhood.  I am retired now, but when I was working I was a unix system administrator for Hughes Aircraft, Computer Sciences, and my own consulting company. 

     I am in my 6th year of teaching. I'm now the STEM teacher for approximately 500 K-5 students.

     I have started my 2nd through 5th grade students in their journey with coding with code.org. I would love to continue that journey with micro:bit. I am responsible for the development of the STEM program for my school, and we have no money to buy materials to teach STEM. I have been relying on things I can find which are free or the donations of others. This would help my students a lot!

Hi, my name is Denise Wright, and I am a STEM/Science Educator from South Carolina. I am celebrating my 21st year teaching middle school. I love everything related to technology ! I am a big astronomy geek and just came home from Kennedy Space Center in Port Canaveral , Florida. 

I had the honor of receiving a behind the scenes tour of Kennedy  and got to the witness the launching of the Parker Solar Probe to the sun on a Delta Heavy IV Rocket. It was the first time I saw a launch and it was truly amazing !

Two years ago, I had the honor of piloting a historic  Alvan Clark Telescope , in distance learning environment , with our state museum. We were able to view the sun/ night sky and control the telescope from our classroom using sky net.

I am interested in teaching students how to code and learn the basics of  python !  The micro bit looks like a great tool for students to learn this coding language while using their creativity and collaboration skills.

It would be great for my students to enter their micro bit projects into our district wide tech fair in which over 1500 students participate.  I look forward to having the possibility of doing some great projects with my students !

Hi, I am a Teaching Assistant. I primarily work in a KS1 class (5-6 year old) but also support the teaching of CS/IT in KS2 (7-8 year old). These would be a great tool to help with the teaching of physical computing and data collection rather then our current reliance on online resources and tools. I also have ambitions to create an Out of School Computing and Electronics Club in my own time. This kit would provide a great start to the club and be a great incentive to get things going. I am a great advocate of all things Raspberry Pi as well as using various Arduino boards and Redfern Electronics' Crumble micro-controller in my own projects, but would love to expand my repertoire with the Micro:bit.

Hi all,  I am a parent, I am from Quebec in Canada, and I am teaching my kid about electronic and programming.  So I have to buy everything on my own...  It would be very appreciated to be able to win a set to teach my kid about MicroBit and use it to teach other kids as well, in my area.