JimPerry
Senior Member
The register comments at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/12/bbc_coding_kids_1_million_micro_bit_giveaway/ are interesting - will it knock a big hole in RevEd's market 
New BBC micro and Picaxe?
- Thread starter JimPerry
- Start date
We're doing something similar in the states, except instead of microcontrollers, we're giving kids a free large-fries if they buy two big-macs... It will be interesting to see which country dominates in the coming generation!
Seriously though, what a great program! I haven't heard of anything like that here.
Seriously though, what a great program! I haven't heard of anything like that here.
geezer88
Senior Member
I'm all for it, too. Too bad the big-macs have this result:
http://fortune.com/2015/03/10/american-millennials-are-among-the-worlds-least-skilled/
So much for American Exceptionalism
tom
techElder
Well-known member
I don't get my "American Exceptionalism" from the newsmedia, tom. I don't really know what the heck that means, anyway, except as a way to pigeon-hole people so they can be marginalized.
BBC seems to be responsible for a lot of things, just like our PBS, at the expense of the taxpayer.
Can someone tell me what a "... subpar-Raspberry-Pi ..." is? Does that mean one that didn't pass inspection? What a prize!
BBC seems to be responsible for a lot of things, just like our PBS, at the expense of the taxpayer.
Can someone tell me what a "... subpar-Raspberry-Pi ..." is? Does that mean one that didn't pass inspection? What a prize!
Hey on the subject of kids and coding, my 8 year old godson has expressed an interest in learning to program - anyone have any suggestions as to where to start? My skills are somewhat basic, literally BASIC, but to most of my friends/family I begrudingly bear the title of 'whiz-kid' because too often I've fixed computer problems they've had.
My son (7) and I have fun with an old PICAXE 08M...I put a little circuit together for him with 3 LEDs on it...I then wrote a quick little program to blink them using symbols...then we started coming up with ideas on how to blink them...and he "writes" (dictates) the code..."High RED" "Pause 1000" "Low RED" he loves it!
premelec
Senior Member
@Haku - there have been some efforts to get programming concepts into young minds... e.g. take a look at http://scratch.mit.edu/
stevesmythe
Senior Member
I'd echo that, as there's a good chance that they'll come across Scratch at (primary) school. To make it more fun and allow real-world devices to be controlled, you can connect a Picaxe to Scratch using Rev-Ed's excellent S2P application.
I've also found that primary age children can get on quite well with Logicator, which allows progression to Picaxe Basic.