CodeShield – Lesson 1

Hacking the learning process

Over the break, I had the opportunity the spend some time developing and testing the first full lesson plan for the codeshield. The result is intended to be used by hackerspaces and school teachers to teach Intro to Arduino.

Following the basic philosophy behind the board, I skipped over almost all the introductory electronics and prototyping stuff, and started the students out with uploading code to the board. Then, the important stuff that they need to know is interspersed with experiments and action to make the board actually do stuff.

Traditional methods for Intro to Arduino courses have taken this the other way around, meaning that students don’t get to upload code and see it work until an hour or two into the process.

For the class, I had 2 adults with no code or electronics experience, a seven year-old, 2 nine-year olds and a 14 year old. The entire lesson took about 90 minutes, and in that time we got all participants going from simple input and output to through more complex logic, analog inputs, Serial communication, and finishing with controlling a servo with to potentiometer.

In general, I’m very pleased with how it went. Everyone (with the possible exception of the 7 year old) was excited through the process, pleased when they got things to work, and able to follow the program logic and make their own customizations. And again, all but the youngest could see the potential and were talking about possibilities and ideas for projects by the end of it. I’ve heard back from 2 of the participants since who’ve picked up their arduinos at home and continued to experiment.

Moving forward, I’d like to tweak it a bit to add some optional code logic at the end, and add a bit more about reading schematics and breadboarding, for anyone who wants to stick around..

Lesson 2 should be coming soon, and I’m going to do a good deal more schematics and breadboarding there, plus probably tone generation, advanced program logic, and robotics logic basics.

Lesson 1 can be found in the Diyode Codeshield Wiki.