More UK students get inventive with .NET Gadgeteer

[Gus_Issa]

Dr Sue Sentance talks about using .NET Gadgeteer for students 14 to 18 years old.

Our experience thus far, based on qualitative feedback, has indicated that .NET Gadgeteer would be a motivating environment for teaching programming within the 14-18 age group and within the curriculum as well as in an extra-curricular club. Recent changes in the Computer Science school curriculum in the UK will mean that this will now be possible. With .NET Gadgeteer we hope that we can engage all students, in terms of a better understanding of how the devices and technology all around us works.

Programming is a lot more fun with gadgeteer, where it gets students interested, even hooked, when seeing a physical feedback for the modules. These kids were able to program a soccer game in one project and they measured the coffee temperature in another. These are just examples of what kids are able to accomplish when using gadgeteer.

Read the full story: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/net_gadgeteer/archive/2012/09/24/more-uk-students-get-inventive-with-net-gadgeteer.aspx
Dr Sue Sentance bio: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/fhsce/about/staff/a-z/sue_sentance.html
What is Gadgeteer: http://www.ghielectronics.com/products/dotnet-gadgeteer
GHI Electronics in the education field: http://www.ghielectronics.com/applications/education

[Nubiarn]

As a industrial control systems engineer living in the uk, this is geat news. Anything that promotes a understanding and interest from a early age is fantastic, as we do have a huge skills shortage over here in this area. To many courses in the UK teach object orientated progrmming in the UK on java based based systems, when more variety and transferable skillsets are required as such these types of useful skill based education is a must.

+10 from me.

[mhectorgato]

In my (QBAsic) programming class in Middle School this was extent of my fun:

I would run this code and tell my teacher that my TRS-80 was broken

10 CLS
20 GOTO 10

Having curriculum that involves sensors and such should really serve to draw the students in and get them hooked!

[Davef]

In my senior school days the closest thing I got to a computer was in my maths class learning about different number bases. I had to wait 10 years to get my hands on a Sinclaire machine pre-dating the Z80. It’s all foggy now. It’s great news that schools in the UK will be teaching real programming skills.

[Justin]

Very cool - also very impressive that the 2 15 year olds built a game in that time frame - they will be nicking our jobs before we know it

[SueS]

Hi Gus - actually I wrote this - not Rob Miles! If anybody wants more details of our work in schools with .NET Gadgeteer do contact me at sue.sentance@ anglia.ac.uk
Thanks for sharing it.

[Justin]

@ SueS - Welcome Sue, good work
Curious to know if anything like this is happening in Hertfordshire to get my kids involved.
Keep up the excellent work.

Cheers
Justin

[Gus_Issa]

@ SueS - Welcome to the community.

Sorry about the mix up, I have updated the original post. Thanks to inspired educators like you, we look forward to seeing more students getting hooked on this “cool” technology