Microbit

As a teacher of relatively hands-on subjects, I regularly get roped into running sessions with groups of Year 6 students coming in for Orientation Days. Since getting my first batch of Micro:bits I have been running short sessions with physical computing since it’s short and accessible, and the kids can achieve something concrete by the end of a 45 minute session. The last couple of years I have been running sessions using laser cut Inchworm robots, where students hook up a servo, battery, and infrared sensor (to demonstrate external sensing but also to remove the need to fiddle with buttons on moving objects) to the Micro:bit, and then write some basic code investigating ideal angles of movement for the servo, delay time in between moves, and utilising loops. ...

Back in 2017 when I was first thinking about how I could use physical computing like Micro:bits in my classroom, I wrote some quick and nasty programs to demonstrate networking concepts like attenuation and latency in wireless connections as well as adapting some ideas from the Networking With the micro:bit book, and using basic wired networks for Morse Code (the linked site is not the original project I used the idea from, but there are only so many permutations). ...

Last year when looking at wireless concepts with my Year 8 Digital Technologies students, I wrote a program for wireless beacons and laser cut a Ghostbusters style PKE Meter with some servos and a RGB LED for students to go on a hunt in our library. It was a good opportunity to look at things like the range of wireless signals, interference due to obstruction of different materials, and noisy broadcast channels. The students quite enjoyed it and it was a nice excuse to get out of the classroom. ...

This is a bit of a retrospective of teaching Robotics as a subject to Year 8 students this year. A bit of a theme for my newish subjects tends to be a reduction in expectations as I filter out what I would have liked to have worked into what actually worked and variations on a theme. The three themes I’ve really thought about since I started teaching this subject are: ...

Motivation This term I’ve been working through Data Representation and some Networks concepts with my Year 8 students. I used Micro:bits extensively for both aspects of this for the hands-on approach and ready access to simple networking code. To finish off the term, after looking at things like network latency, I thought it’d be fun to do an activity built around attenuation of wireless signals. Previously I’ve had students group up in pairs and have the Micro:bits send an image back and forth pixel by pixel. This allows for students to see when messages have not arrived as they will have missing pixels from their displays. ...

Motivation Ever since I bought some of Kitronik’s :move buggies I’ve been interested in making robots with the Micro:bit. They’re simple to program, have a decent set of features, and the kids enjoy using them. However they’re also a royal pain to assemble due to fiddly screw locations, quite expensive for what they are (we pay around $60AUD for what amounts to about $15-20AUD in components), and difficult to add on to due to cutting you off from all the additional pins the Micro:bit has to offer. ...

This post is intended to be a bit of a primer for teachers interested in getting into more varied use of the BBC Micro:bit beyond the inbuilt basics. My intention is to put together two posts: this one on the hardware and the ecosystem, and another on approaches in the classroom (which will mostly be a list of mistakes I’ve made and thoughts on doing things beter). This is by no means an exhaustive list of things you can do or components available. I’ve generally experimented with cheap and cheerful parts that I can source myself for a few dollars to see if it’s worth implementing in the classroom. I still have a long list of things I want to try! The components listed here I’ve generally had good success with. ...

Testing out LDR sensors This year I have been teaching robotics to Year 8s for the first time. I’ve mainly been using BBC Micro:bits, since they are quite affordable, robust, are easy to hook up to a range of widely available components, and are easy to program in a few different environments (MicroPython being my weapon of choice). To keep myself entertained, and to provide my students with a sample project (although more complex code-wise than they’re likely to accomplish) I decided to make something myself this term while my class worked on their own group projects (theirs are themed after the UN Global Goals). I had ideas for either building a carousel or a light gun game, and settled on the latter so I didn’t have to also tackle 3D printing out cams and gears and the like. ...

Security of Wireless Networks My previous lesson looking at wireless networks used Microbits and their Bluetooth networking to illustrate some of the problems with local wireless networks (as opposed to general internet connectivity, which we mostly did by doing speed tests and complaining about the school’s net connection :). At the end I wrote a bit about what I wanted to do with the next lesson, which was look at some basic crypto to handle the eavesdropping problem we had when someone else listened to the same channel we were communicating on. ...

Overview Part of the new Digital Technologies curriculum for year 7 and 8 involves students learning about wired and wireless networks, and methods of data transmission and security. There are activities from the Digital Technologies Learning Hub that deal with routing and issues with performance (that are pretty good unplugged activities). I use these or variations on these when I teach those concepts, but I wanted to put together something that actually involved technology in the classroom, and dealt with ideas a bit lower down the network stack. ...