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  • Author Author: msimon16
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BOSON Starter Kit + micro:bit - Review

msimon16

Table of contents

RoadTest: BOSON Starter Kit + micro:bit

Author: msimon16

Creation date:

Evaluation Type: Development Boards & Tools

Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True

What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: LITTLE BITS, arduino starter kit , circuit playground etc...

What were the biggest problems encountered?: none

Detailed Review:

allo allo

I am a junior and high school science and techno lab technician, I also run after school tech and robotic activities.

so i had the boson starter kit tested by kids attending those activities more than 5 sessions were used by different kids trying out this great kit.

beginners to advance tinkerers all enjoyed the kit,

the introduction project cards were plenty to get them started with a minimum of intervention on my part. which led to a great variety of different experimentations afterwards.

for kids from 11 years old to 16, noob or whiz kids all had fun and created easily. In free form activities this kind of kit has it all. in hackathon formulas i think they would be even more perfect.

 

the big potential i think is with teachers that are not inclined to introducing tech to their teaching toolkit. first the no breadboard is a big plus, connectors and alligator clips is easy to manage in a classroom with 30 ish kids.

with activities that are more than introduction project, the potential is huge

 

in other context than school i used it at the municipal library where i give robotic activities, kids working//playing (thus learning) with Lego boost kits where invited to add to their robot a sensor and a led output and with relatively little guidance they were able to assemble  a workable circuit. the coding was done with more guidance since these kids had no experience with scratch, but scratch (makecode) being what it is they caught on rapidly (all hail the scratch paradigm).

 

sorry for the lackluster review taking pictures while conducting these activities is a bit at end of my attention spectrum !!! especially this close to Xmas vacation

 

all in all boson rocks and i hope will rock some more in middle and high school science//etc… projects

Anonymous
  • sorry for the lackluster review taking pictures while conducting these activities is a bit at end of my attention spectrum !!! especially this close to Xmas vacation

    Really.

     

    The timetable for the review was made available before you applied. You have 60 days to provide a review after receiving it so surely taking some pictures was possible.

     

    Mark

  • I would second the comments of . Also it would be useful for other people to understand how exactly you used the micro:bit with Scratch and the Lego Boost. Did you use the micro:bit Scratch 2 extension, or was it Scratch 3 that you used? I understand that some or all of the Boson components have Lego-compatible studs. Does this include the expansion board itself or just the other components? What components exactly come with the kit? Were there any limitations that you had to work around? Photos of how you integrated the Boson components into the Lego construction would be helpful.

  • Would have been nice to see a review with a little more grammar and punctuation, given that you used it in an educational context.

     

    More than that, some photos of the bits you received, how they plugged together, what projects your group of students accomplished with them and how it compares to its competition was what I expected to see. It would have been nice to get some detail on what might be the bigger stumbling blocks, how they can be overcome and how it was integrated into the teaching program aside from just "handing it out".

     

    As it stands, this review is extremely brief and only considers the superficial aspects of the kit. I hope we can see an update to this later on, as I'm not sure that the RoadTest would have been won with this kind of review in mind.

     

    - Gough