Well, I must say that is has been a long time since I've been here. The last thing that I remember was Stan changing user names which I feel was quite a while ago.
Anyhow, as some of you may (or may not) be aware, Western Australia is getting into the full swing of Outcomes Based Education (OBE). During my absence I've been quite busy helping my ex-electronics and robotics teacher develop the course for the OBE Course of Engineering of which includes Computers and Electronics.
Since I was in Year 10, I’ve been trying to get my teacher into PICAXE but without proper funding, time or incentive to do so, nothing happened. Since Year 12 till now, I’ve managed to convince my teacher that PICAXE is the way to go, especially since he had the ability to get into so PIC stuff though Design and Technology professional development. Since then, I must say that my teacher has been quite impressed with what PICAXE has to offer. We have already setup quite a few breadboarding kits akin to Stan's PICNIC kit and the students have had a brief opportunity to get involved in some breadboarding. I've also designed a PCB which will be used as the equivalent of the Rev-Ed "Experimenter's board" - it is a bit bigger for less able fingers and a bit more spaced out for clarity and ease of identifying the sub-systems.
The primary use of the PICAXE line was to migrate from the use of the PIC16F84 and PIC16F628 line of PIC chips which were programmed using Logicator and used in a buggy. The most identifiable advantage is that students can easily take the project home and reprogram the project at home without the expense of proprietary hardware or expensive programmers and BASIC compilers and flowcharting facilities.
Development of the buggy has been rather interesting and has been a good example of some of the requirements for material selection and design outcome demonstration. We have produced over five (5) different boards with the latest being roughly 50% the PCB area of the original! It is often hard to encourage students to realise that simple CAD packages though to full auto-routing softwares do not necessarily provide the most ideal solution to schematic-PCB design, but in my opinion, such an evolution in design provides such motivation.
The introduction of the course has also provided the department with funds to get in hardware not available in may schools in Western Australia, possibly even in Australia. Students now have the opportunity to draw wheels and baseplates for their buggy in 3D in a CAD package and using a CNC milling machine to mill their designs into Perspex. Keep in mind that it is professional finished such as milled parts which provide students with the incentive to put that extra little bit of effort into their work.
Basically, I think that PICAXE has provided the school with the ability to do things which were not available to me when I was there just a couple of years back. It is also personally satisfying to give back something to the school. I hope that the hard work that my teacher and I have done over the last few months will provide students with new opportunities and insights into what electronics has to offer, aside from the arguably simple and unsatisfying Dick Smith Funway kits!
Untimately, despite the flood of controversy surrounding the introduction of OBE into WA,
<b>PICAXE + OBE = SUCCESS! </b>
I’d just like to thank everyone who has helped me in the past and be rest assured that your knowledge has not only helped me personally will also help those students who will study this course next year and into the future.
<b><i>ylp88 </b> </i>
PS. Sorry for the long post. Probably bored most readers, but I feel that there was a lot to report given my absence.
Edited by - ylp88 on 05/12/2006 13:50:53
Anyhow, as some of you may (or may not) be aware, Western Australia is getting into the full swing of Outcomes Based Education (OBE). During my absence I've been quite busy helping my ex-electronics and robotics teacher develop the course for the OBE Course of Engineering of which includes Computers and Electronics.
Since I was in Year 10, I’ve been trying to get my teacher into PICAXE but without proper funding, time or incentive to do so, nothing happened. Since Year 12 till now, I’ve managed to convince my teacher that PICAXE is the way to go, especially since he had the ability to get into so PIC stuff though Design and Technology professional development. Since then, I must say that my teacher has been quite impressed with what PICAXE has to offer. We have already setup quite a few breadboarding kits akin to Stan's PICNIC kit and the students have had a brief opportunity to get involved in some breadboarding. I've also designed a PCB which will be used as the equivalent of the Rev-Ed "Experimenter's board" - it is a bit bigger for less able fingers and a bit more spaced out for clarity and ease of identifying the sub-systems.
The primary use of the PICAXE line was to migrate from the use of the PIC16F84 and PIC16F628 line of PIC chips which were programmed using Logicator and used in a buggy. The most identifiable advantage is that students can easily take the project home and reprogram the project at home without the expense of proprietary hardware or expensive programmers and BASIC compilers and flowcharting facilities.
Development of the buggy has been rather interesting and has been a good example of some of the requirements for material selection and design outcome demonstration. We have produced over five (5) different boards with the latest being roughly 50% the PCB area of the original! It is often hard to encourage students to realise that simple CAD packages though to full auto-routing softwares do not necessarily provide the most ideal solution to schematic-PCB design, but in my opinion, such an evolution in design provides such motivation.
The introduction of the course has also provided the department with funds to get in hardware not available in may schools in Western Australia, possibly even in Australia. Students now have the opportunity to draw wheels and baseplates for their buggy in 3D in a CAD package and using a CNC milling machine to mill their designs into Perspex. Keep in mind that it is professional finished such as milled parts which provide students with the incentive to put that extra little bit of effort into their work.
Basically, I think that PICAXE has provided the school with the ability to do things which were not available to me when I was there just a couple of years back. It is also personally satisfying to give back something to the school. I hope that the hard work that my teacher and I have done over the last few months will provide students with new opportunities and insights into what electronics has to offer, aside from the arguably simple and unsatisfying Dick Smith Funway kits!
Untimately, despite the flood of controversy surrounding the introduction of OBE into WA,
<b>PICAXE + OBE = SUCCESS! </b>
I’d just like to thank everyone who has helped me in the past and be rest assured that your knowledge has not only helped me personally will also help those students who will study this course next year and into the future.
<b><i>ylp88 </b> </i>
PS. Sorry for the long post. Probably bored most readers, but I feel that there was a lot to report given my absence.
Edited by - ylp88 on 05/12/2006 13:50:53
