Kids and .NET Gadgeteer is an excellent combination http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/events/thinkcomputerscience/comp.htm
Very cool! Has anybody approached you and/or MS Research about doing something similar on this side of the pond?
Microsoft is doing a terrific job in the education area. You should see much more in future.
This is in UK, right?
Yes
We’re running a number of pilots in the US, too. We hope to have results from the first half-year to share soon!
Kerry, please let me know if you’re doing any piloting in the DC/MD/VA area. Might be an opportunity to do some follow-up stuff locally.
@ devhammer - will do. The first round has been mostly Seattle-area since we know a lot of people around here who we can convince to be guinea pigs. We hope to get Gadgeteer into schools nationwide though.
No chances to run a contest yet but I agree it would be fun to do one in the US!
No doubt kids love Gadgeteer as they can’t be much different then the big kids in this forum. I’m working with one local High School Robotics Club (and they want to make it a curriculum course in Robotics/Controller Design) and slowing moving them towards Gadgeteer. The problem with schools is as always funding, and for this school I found them a nice corporate sponsor that they had to turn down as they were a direct competitor to the corporate sponsor they already had (I would have put them in a box and let them fight it out for see who would donate the most). I don’t remember school being this complex when I went so very long ago (we were happy to get whatever).
I wish we could do the same here in France…
But, as you may not know, here, in France, Microsoft is “often” seen as kind of devil… and of course,
Apple & Google are the good guys in the crowd…
I know a lot of people working in the university and for them, Microsoft means “money” and against open source (often, they’re not aware of the Visual Studio express which are free) and even not aware of all the things done by microsoft (Micro Framework, Robotics, and so on)…
Often in French university, the reaction is “no microsoft” and everything in open source, meaning Linux, C++…
Too bad this situation hasn’t change for years… By the way, I don’t know if microsoft is really keen on changing that… I know MS is pushing hard in some “Engineer High school” but toward university, I don’t see (well at least in Toulouse) changes in the latest years.
We will see…
Yes I see but they need to learn now that “Look, Microsoft has the best open source project ever been offered to the embedded world”. No linux, no apple, no arduino can do what hydra/spider/cerberus/hybrid can do 
What Microsoft did well on this is involving the community which is #1 on the importance list I believe…just like GHI always does
Gus, this may be true for tiny devices but, in the more global embedded area just have a look on what is developped by TI for DaVinci platform, OMAP and DM series… most of the dev tools are linux based.
To be honest, dealing with the TI DVSDK is a pain due to higher complexity of the target but the community is also very active and things move quickly in the right direction since a year.
Embedded devices are now including FPGA, and even if tools are not always open, UNIX based OS embedded on those devices are widely used…
In fact if it was possible to develop on Linux for TinyCLR, I would probably use Linux. I 'm not afraid of GCC, DDD and so on and I like to have full control of what I develop (one can argue that I shouldn’t use managed code…)
By “embedded” I meant deeply embedded. Things smaller than linux can run. But to your comment, look at beagleboard, it is cheap and powerful but extremely difficult to use unless you are a linux genius. I did buy one like everyone did because it is “cool and powerful”. It has been collecting dust for years, never been used.
Anyone out there did actually manage to use beagleboard for something? I believe an average developer like myself with over 10 years experience would find it too much work. By the way, I also took training directly from TI on OMAP and I still couldn’t do anything useful. I am very sure I can figure it out if I wanted but spending 3 months in learning to blink an LED is not exactly productive 
Now give me a TI OMAP board with NEMTF and Gadgeteer and I am in heaven.
Linux… I thought religion was an inappropriate discussion topic. 