What Micro-Controller Would You Use to Teach With?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @04:24PM from the technology-in-a-school-environment dept.

Rukie asks: "I'm looking into starting some sort of robotics class for my high school, which severely lacks any sort of technological classes. I am now wondering what micro-controllers are best for an educational environment. I definitely want something more advanced than the Legos, but something that won't fly over people's heads. Are there cheap, scaleable micro-controllers for learning in a classroom or at home? I'm curious how my fellow readers have hacked up toys to make their own robotics at minimal cost."

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Re:PicAxe by far by Anonymous Coward · 2007-02-01 05:10 · Score: 1, Funny

"Stop confusing education with entertainment. Engineering is not a warm-and-fuzzy discipline."

Excellent point! Here are some other great activities to get high school kids interested in the realities of engineering:

1. Writing device drivers
2. Tracking down race conditions
3. Finding the bad capacitor on a motherboard
4. Calibration (of any kind)
5. Filling out timesheets for 4 different customers, each having 3 levels of project codes

Man, if these don't get the kids excited, nothing will!