Arduino

I was pleased with the success of the Raspberry Pi elective and thought that the Arduino might be another device that would engage the students. I had not worked with one before and was slightly concerned that I would only be a day or two ahead of the students. I decided to move forward with the program anyway.

I ordered eight of them as well as 8 kits to support their use. Pictured below are the two pieces

 I placed each kit in a container so that the small parts would not be lost. As with the Raspberry Pi  I also created a Google document to share with the students so that they could get started. The setup was much different than the Pi in that the Pi itself was a computer and once setup could be programmed with Python, a language the students already knew. The Arduino is controlled by the computer and requires the Arduino software to be loaded on the computer before use. Once the software has been downloaded you need to connect the Arduino via USB and define the port to use. That done you can write the program once you learn how to program in the language.