2 ms·

Sorry but for a modern kid, the sort of projects you are talking about sound like the sort of projects that an adult thinks kids would love, not what kids would

Sorry but for a modern kid, the sort of projects you are talking about sound like the sort of projects that an adult thinks kids would love, not what kids would actually love, which is screens, color, games, robotics and interaction. It was a huge mistake not to ship this with a video port.

detaro 9y ago
> It was a huge mistake not to ship this with a video port. Looking at what I see happening with the Raspberry Pi, I don't agree with that assertion. It's not been very important for making cooler projects with kids, it only made coding on it easier since it didn't come with a nice remote environment and you thus could use the Linux desktop on the Pi for coding. (It also opens up use cases like "media center", but those are not very relevant for education). Kids find going to hardware like the microbit/Pi/Arduino interesting because it is breaking out of the usual screen(+keyboard in case of a PC) environment, and you can do > games, robotics and interaction that's not limited to the screen. And nothing stops you to combine both, have the microbit talk to a PC/phone.
IanCal 9y ago
> a modern kid I think it's a mistake to assume modern kids need high powered things to be interesting. I've been at a maker faire where the kids were amazed at seeing an old broadcast camera hooked up to a TV. All it was doing was recording and playing things back, but they liked it. I'm sure lots of them even had phones which would do the same thing but with higher quality. The local science museum always hads kids running about in the discovery section playing with things like pulleys and shouting into the long tube that creates a delay, or the glasses that turn things upside down. Kids still play with lego which has absolutely no moving parts or complex interaction. I'm sure if you start by telling kids it'll be boring they'll hate it. Otherwise kids seem to be able to have fun with anything as complex as a cardbox box upwards. > games, robotics and interaction. I mean, several of my examples are games, robots and involve interaction. I can easily see how to use two of these to make a robot wars robot, one for the controller (steer with tilting and a button for "go" and a button for "fire") and one for the robot. Don't tell me kids wouldn't be interested in making fighting robots. > It was a huge mistake not to ship this with a video port. I think it'd be a huge mistake to try and make something like the rPi. That already exists if you want to do stuff connected to a screen with a full OS and internet access. I doubt it would have fitted into the budget for production either, given that these needed to be given to every year 7 in the country. I think you're trying to make it boring, and have fun with that, I'm going to go and make a robot. Or maybe finally build the sensor to see how far my degu runs in a day on his wheel.

detaro 9y ago

> It was a huge mistake not to ship this with a video port. Looking at what I see happening with the Raspberry Pi, I don't agree with that assertion. It's not been very important for making cooler projects with kids, it only made coding on it easier since it didn't come with a nice remote environment and you thus could use the Linux desktop on the Pi for coding. (It also opens up use cases like "media center", but those are not very relevant for education). Kids find going to hardware like the microbit/Pi/Arduino interesting because it is breaking out of the usual screen(+keyboard in case of a PC) environment, and you can do > games, robotics and interaction that's not limited to the screen. And nothing stops you to combine both, have the microbit talk to a PC/phone.

IanCal 9y ago

> a modern kid I think it's a mistake to assume modern kids need high powered things to be interesting. I've been at a maker faire where the kids were amazed at seeing an old broadcast camera hooked up to a TV. All it was doing was recording and playing things back, but they liked it. I'm sure lots of them even had phones which would do the same thing but with higher quality. The local science museum always hads kids running about in the discovery section playing with things like pulleys and shouting into the long tube that creates a delay, or the glasses that turn things upside down. Kids still play with lego which has absolutely no moving parts or complex interaction. I'm sure if you start by telling kids it'll be boring they'll hate it. Otherwise kids seem to be able to have fun with anything as complex as a cardbox box upwards. > games, robotics and interaction. I mean, several of my examples are games, robots and involve interaction. I can easily see how to use two of these to make a robot wars robot, one for the controller (steer with tilting and a button for "go" and a button for "fire") and one for the robot. Don't tell me kids wouldn't be interested in making fighting robots. > It was a huge mistake not to ship this with a video port. I think it'd be a huge mistake to try and make something like the rPi. That already exists if you want to do stuff connected to a screen with a full OS and internet access. I doubt it would have fitted into the budget for production either, given that these needed to be given to every year 7 in the country. I think you're trying to make it boring, and have fun with that, I'm going to go and make a robot. Or maybe finally build the sensor to see how far my degu runs in a day on his wheel.