Controling a Robotic Arm With Micro:bits. How to make computer science education more interesting.
1 minute read
Fri 03 May 2019
Captivating a group of children for a sustained period of time is notoriously hard. I will be exporing with you how the micro:bit can be used to engage a young audience with interactive demos and programming activities.
Children love to physically interact with hardware. That is what is great about the micro:bit. It not only has built in LEDs and buttons but can also control bigger more exciting electronics like robotic arms. This allows for setup that gives students of all ability levels a challenge. Students that are beginners to programming can be given a more complete program or walk throught a worksheet that takes them through the process of controling the device (in this case a robotic arm) step by step. Students that have higher programming skills can be given a more bare bones / boilerplate source file and can write code to control the arm with less guidance.
About
This talk was presented at
- PyCon SK 2019
- PyDays Vienna 2019