[chbot] My Arduino robotics class in Korea

[Andrew Errington]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 20:00:56 follower wrote:
> On 20 May 2012 22:18, Andrew Errington <erringtona at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1. Intro to Arduino [...]
> > 2. Digital inputs [...]
> > Each lesson is 45 minutes, and I can't do too much stuff in that time.
>
> Certainly the first couple of sessions seem manageable in terms of
> breadth of content--based on my experience teaching a 3 hour
> introductory workshop for adults. (I can't comment on the later ones.)
>
> The trickiest one is probably the first one which will have the need
> to cover a lot of ground to get to the LED blinking stage.
>
> You might want to consider a bit of a "show & tell" of "this is what
> other people have made Arduino do" somewhere along the way.
>
> The most helpful feedback I received for the workshops I ran was to
> let people get their hands on as fast as possible so the toys aren't
> burning a hole through the table and then step back a bit to cover
> some of the intro/overview side of things.

Thanks Philip,

That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.  I really do want to 
get the students to 'do something', no matter how trivial, as soon as 
possible.  The LED flashing is the simplest visible thing I know of, and it's 
also one of the demo/test projects with the Arduino software so is pretty 
much guaranteed to work.  To seasoned experimenters it sounds utterly 
trivial, but it demonstrates to the students that *they* are in control.  
Practical session 1b is "make the LED flash every half-second" which is an 
immediate illustration of cause and effect and an affirmation that the 
student made it happen.

In Korea I have found at least two vibrant Arduino message boards, so I will 
encourage the students to look at what other people are doing (which will be 
accessible as it's in their own language).  Also, I could have originally 
chosen a Korean designed robotics platform which would have made some things 
easier, but of course no-one outside of Korea would know about it.  I decided 
that something that was popular around the world (Arduino) was a better 
teaching tool, and it ties in with my purpose for being here (teaching 
English).

Best wishes,

Andrew