New self-driving car created from littleBits STEAM kit. LittleBits kit includes a range of sensors, motors, and guides for students and teachers to easily learn computing and hardware. Their latest kit allows students grade 3-8 to create a self-driving car. (via littleBits Electronic)
Talk about one of the coolest ways to introduce kids to electronic development....
LittleBits released their new STEAM kit in March and has some teachers and students raving about the new improvements. LittleBits is a popular maker of kits that include sensors, motors, and more to make it easier for teachers and students in grade school (typically 3-8) to learn about computing and hardware. Their kits are also supposed to tie into STEAM subjects and fulfil core learning requirements to make them easily implementable in state schools.
However, their kits were sometimes seen as a little confusing due to a lack of clear instructions and viable bits for easy classroom learning. The new kit includes everything students will need for a group of fun projects, including a self-driving car. It also comes with a new instruction booklet that makes it very easy for teachers and students to create the projects for learning purposes. This is really important when first starting out. Then, they have a section of prototyping and the invention process to help kids think up new projects based upon what they learned from creating the previous projects.
A teacher named, Colleen Graves, was raving about this new kit and instruction booklet and how easy it made teaching computer science. The kit also seems like a good way to inspire children within the home to learn STEAM, since the instruction booklet makes it more clear to implement outside of a classroom setting as well. I guess tinkering parents can inspire tinkering children?
However, this set does not come cheap! It retails at $299.95 and is available for pre-order; due to ship on April 22nd. The kit includes a light sensor and a temperature sensor along with all components needed for a good DC servo motor. The kit includes 19 electronic pieces and 38 accessories total.
However, they also sell more affordable kits that are all child/first-time coder friendly. For instance, there is an Arduino kits that retails at $89 (about the cheapest they offer) which includes an arduino microcontroller, 6 modules, and 3 accessories. Of course, if you are bold and adventurous, you can also go it alone!
It is nice to see that neat maker kits exist that are child-friendly for STEAM education, which will be the backbone of our future economy. Now, if only these kits came at a cheaper price, they would be able to benefit and inspire more children across a wider socio-economic background, right? Let’s be honest, how many Chicago Public Schools do you think will fund and implement such a program for grades 3-8?! Answer: not many. Hopefully this can change in the coming years, but probably not without some prodding from parents and the local community.
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