Education/training kit

We are thinking of offering a low cost kit for schools and training, $99.95.

If you were teaching a gadgeteer class, in high school or to professionals, and you have $100 to work with, what would your kit include, keeping under $100.

And if I gave you another $20, what would you add?

just look at similarly priced arduino and raspberry pi kits…should include similar things since at the end of the day, i’m sure the goal of educator would be to expose students to electronics and programming - language and hardware specifics probably does not matter much, cost/price point is more important.

You know my list. I’m going to stay quiet and see how close we end up :slight_smile:

Really a $100 isn’t much when 35% goes to just turning on a mainboard, which really doesn’t leave much for educational projects, but maybe something like:

Character Display Module
Distance US3 Module
FEZ Cerberus Mainboard
Joystick Module
LED7R Module
LightSense Module
Tunes Module
USB Client SP Module
Accelerometer Module

but even this is $109.50 and if I had an extra $20 I’d likely toss in a ENC28 network card. This cost bracket excludes anything that includes a motor.

I guess to answer the question, you would need to know what what input / output is helpful for classes. Is just basic “press a button and watch a light come on and change colors” enough for classrooms?

For your list, I would think that an ENC is more important than an accelerometer.

I think an ENC is important, especially in this IoT world we’re coming into, but I’d hate to trade off the accelerometer for it. If I personally think about how I would expect a school purchasing process to go, it’d be “we have $X budget, we get X / $100 kits”, rather than thinking about additional modules that might make good experiments.

Is it possible to connect an Distance US3 Module with the Cerberus ?,
i wanted to buy one, but unfortunately the Data Sheet of the Distance Module says, it requires an “X” Socket and on the Cerberusthere is no “X” Socket.

@ -Encore- - The product page s updated. This distance module works on X or Y sockets.

@ Encore - According to the Gadgeteer spec, any “Y” socket is also an “X” socket. Personally, I think this isn’t obvious enough that they should ask users to make this assumption (or assume that users have read the spec…). I think modules makers should go ahead and specify “XY”.

You have to start with that press the button and turn on a light as a starting point for a classroom full of students, some not interested or at least not initially interested in this stuff, so you have to shoot low to begin with.

One of the other problems concerning the networking module is the additional costs of infrastructure to the school, ie you just can’t have a ENC module, you need cables and routers etc so its not just a simply matter of removing $20 worth of modules to make up the ENC cost and the wifi module is completely out of budget range.

The other thing when considering the modules is how to tie them into other course material, for example the accelerometer can be used to tie in what the students are learning in physics. If I had a little extra cash to play with I’d maybe toss in an micro SD card reader, but then I’d run into the extra cost of SD Cards (time x to cover lose and theft I’m afraid). Maybe worth considering making a special educational version SD card reader where the card is permanently installed and make it a really cheap card to keep the cost down.

While I would agree that IoT is looming on the horizon, the cost to get there might be beyond most school budgets and I haven’t exactly seen industry tripping over each other trying to support IoT education in schools, so for now the ENC module is still off my list.

@ Gus - Any progress on this? I’m working with a sponsor to purchase 5-10 for NashMicro for a workshop I’m teaching at DevLink & the Nashville Mini Maker Faire. Hopefully I can get them purchased by the end of June. Sorry, no new news on the other…

Lucky bastard, that’s it I’m moving to Nashville.

Give you an idea of the level of stupid here, I managed to find a sponsor for a local high school, but since it wasn’t their regular corporate sponsor (a competitor), they had to refuse the sponsorship, and never did get anything.

Come on! We need more Gadgeteers!

Yea, that’s unfortunate. Sounds like someone on the school board also works for the sponsor. I’m not counting my chickens yet, though. When they realized that DevLink is in Chattanooga and they don’t have an office there, they’ve had to rethink it… I think they’ll come around but if not, I’ve got a few ideas for us to raise the funds ourselves.

Almost ready.

Cool. I wish my funding was as confident…

Has the list of modules been finalized? I have two kits sponsored already and I’m making a custom mounting board. I need to make sure it’s large enough to hold everything.

Should be up in few days

I know that I’m too late, but I saw this thread too late… However, I would like to briefly mention what modules/things I would like for my students:

  • Mounting Plate
  • Cerberus
  • USB Client DP
  • BreadBoard X1
  • Joystick
  • LED7R
  • Character Display
  • Light Sense
  • Distance US3
  • Serial-USB

Yes, I know: I’m over the limit… :slight_smile:

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Thanks.

A hardware kit for high school students should be kept to a minimum as most of the time spent will be figuring out how to write the firmware and PC/smartphone software to interface with. I would like a kit with the following to resell for beginning students:

Cerbuino Bee
Bluetooth module
Temp & humidity module