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Adafruit To Teach Electronics Through Puppets In New Kids Show
coop0030 writes "Wired has an article up about how Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they're enlisting the help of puppets. Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor 'Ladyada' Fried, Adafruit's founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties. Episodes will premiere this March, and Fried holds hope for them to help inspire the next generation of designers and builders."
Now I can figure out how all this shit works.
Can't wait for the one about magnetics!
Now I can figure out how all this shit works. Can't wait for the one about magnetics!
Well, we might get clowns, but they'll be educated. This sort of teaching has being going on for a long time. I believe it's called McCracker Ln. Or Hayseed Road.... no, I got it.
Sesame Street! to the rescue...
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Can I play the role of the boy who stuck fingers into electric outlet ???
Good for sex, CPR, stranger danger, recycling, counting...
Onto a more serious note; it's always great to see somebody bring in some new ideas to bring electronics to kids.
It will be very interesting to see how the concepts are brought across using puppets. I would have liked to see some examples before the story went live.
The big issue that I always find is that when somebody comes up with a new idea for teaching concepts, they can illustrate basic concepts very effectively but get bogged down when the material becomes deeper and not so readily obvious.
Having said that, if they have a character for a 555, maybe they have a good formula!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
We're gonna need another Timmy!
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
Having said that, if they have a character for a 555, maybe they have a good formula!
I'm not so sure. That 555 character sounds like he's going to get boring after audiences see him doing the same thing over and over and over again...
That sounds about as exciting as watching grass die. No offense meant here, I get the reference to the designer and all, thats cool. But I don'' see how this is going to excite kids. Kid sees "Hans the 555 timer chip". Kid thinks: "Whats a timer chip?" and unless that is answered in a very obvious way EVERY TIME the character is shown, it'll be lost.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Connie the Transistor, instead of, say, Tony the 2n2222?
I'm not 100% sure what a 555 timing chip is so I might have to watch the show myself to learn, lol.
That would be the "74LVC245 - Breadboard Friendly 8-bit Logic Level Shifter" https://www.adafruit.com/products/735 otherwise known as "Shifty"!
You don't even want to know what she has planned for Power Supplies (AC/DC, AC/AC, and DC/DC)!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I thought the new definition of signs someone is a terrorists are people who tinkered with electronics? How can Adafruit be allowed to share this bomb making information to children! it has to be stopped! Wont someone please think of the children!!
Let me guess, the new and improved version of Punch and Judy will be Apple and Samsung?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
not a lot of analog guys here i think
Victor the Varactor diode .........
Travis the Transformer
Polly the polyvaricon capacitor
Timmy the Toroid
Fat Agnes, Paula, Gary The Gate Array, and Sid.
and more..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_custom_chips
My university has employed Muppet lecturers for years!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
She's awesome at marketing. This is basic, basic stuff...
Oh get a grip. Stick to picofarads and low voltage and low amperage and there's no danger.
You can get into trouble with batteries and wire if you try hard enough.
Many of us were building circuits when we were single digit in age.
I applaud Ladyada. I think what she's doing already (with adafruit) is fantastic. This just adds to my admiration.
she markets to wanna be nerds who already have an interest in this shit, I highly doubt her "OMFG everyone read this" on avrdude really got too many new people involved
Why oh why do I have to be honest!?
So how is that different from a capacitor character, or frankly any other component character? Your comment seems to be coming from the perspective that kids will be just stumbling upon this show and go "this is boring!" If indeed this is your ernest presumption, then I see you are saying.
But I think presumption is wrong, the kids who will be watching this show are going to be doing so because they want to learn about electronics. They will be seeking it out/been directed to it, because they are self selecting the material.
I have to say, however, that unless you read in the perspective I describe above, this post sounds a lot like a troll, and thus explains why you were voted as such.
Seems to me that if a kid in the single-digit age group is interested in electronics, they're probably smart enough to get it without puppets.
And if they do need puppets, they probably should stick to reading and writing and not eating paste.
I feel awfully cynical about this, don't know why though.
Actually, if all you think the 555 can do is oscillate, then you're in for a pleasant surprise.
There are a lot of really amazing things you can do with it - just doing a quick search, take a look HERE.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Citation Needed
Are you saying she is lying?
As far as I can tell you are complaining because she writes good descriptions, and sells commodity components — as commodity components — at a markup on par with other small volume retailers... and is successful. Is that right? Please correct me, if I am wrong.
Adafruit — I am not affiliated with them — sells original products, kits, and components to a spectrum of consumers.
BTW Sparkfun sells a similar shift register for about the same price. Are you saying they are unethical and not honest as well?
So you're agreeing that she provides nothing more or better than any other small volume retailer? So why the constant fanboyism and "2012 entrepreneur of the year"?
I can't find any link at Adafruit's site for the puppet shows.
Can anyone kindly share the links?
Thank you !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Bipolar Hal, your NPN pal?
I agree that she is on par with other small volume retailers, but she providers better descriptions, tutorials, and supplemental material than the other.
AND as I pointed out she offers a lot more than components. If you are just interested in commodity components there isn't much point in going to Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc etc. But Adafruit offers original products, kits, tutorials, and community. That is why she has the fanbase and media attention.
Nor does that seem that hard to understand.
I doubt it'll work like they expect. What we need is someone like Bill Nye showing experiments with platforms like the Arduino, RasPi, and simply circuits. As well as parents that aren't afraid to let their children hurt themselves on the tools a few times so that they learn to handle them with care. When your a child is perhaps the best time to learn to solder, everyone burns themselves in the beginning, but when your a child your healing capabilities are ridiculously good. It's also a great time to teach a child burn triage and how to put out fire (instead of standing around in shock while everything burns to the ground).
My mother was terrified every time my father gave me electronics lessons (he was an air force trained electronic engineer). I burned myself a few times, but the pain taught me to treat the hot end of the tools with respect and care. I caught things on fire, but learned how to smother the fire with the shirt off my back, as well as how to use a fire extinguisher. She still to this day keeps a Christmas tree ornament I made when I was 8 years old, a gingerbread bear that eyes light up and plays deck the halls on a piezoelectric speaker embedded into it's chest when touched.
I didn't learn because my father tried to teach me the way a school would. I learned because he took a note from shows like Bill Nye (which I watched). He resorted to goofy experiments that I could do beside him, providing important guidance along the way. I laughed a lot while learning due to that teaching style, which made it one of very few points in my childhood that I still remember.
It's some piece-of-shit chip which is unreasonably popular given how unreliable it is and that it ultimately doesn't do anything special nor does it do anything particularly well. They should do the kids a favor and not even mention it. The only thing the 555 timer has going for it is vast swaths of example schematics which each have about a 50% chance of working as described, which frankly is as likely to deter kids from experimenting further when what they build doesn't work, as it is to encourage them when it does work. Spare them the misery.
Teach them how to build actual oscillators instead. (This presumes someone actually knows how -- I've seen too many people try to teach oscillators who clearly don't understand how they work themselves -- likely leading to the popularity of the 555.) Even an op-amp, a capacitor, and a few resistors makes a much more elegant oscillator than a 555. Use a 74HC123 for timing purposes, since unlike the 555, it doesn't become unreliable as hell the moment you try to go outside the audible frequency range.
safety troll archetype.
able to see life only through the lens of their own personal failures, their feedback consists entirely of reasons why you should never do anything. ever.
"nobody should ever try to teach astronomy to kids because the sun is much too bright."
There is a transistor character (all characters are listed on this page). No mention of a cross-dressing nun though.
as an example you can put an adult male into cardiac arrest with a 9 volt battery if you get blood contact.
seriously a nice chunky INSULATED screwdriver will work for anything in the pico/nano farad range you are more likely to "pop" a cap by putting it in a circuit backwards than get a dangerous shock from a charged cap.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I started trying to teach my kid something about electronics the other day. I tore apart some broken dongle or other to show him what capacitors and stuff look like. But I didn't recognize any of the multicolored 1 mm sq. little bits of stuff stuck to the board.
So I tore apart some broken dongle or other from 10 years ago to show him what capacitors and stuff look like, and the little multicolored bits were about 3 mm sq. Not much of an improvement. I'm almost positive I probably identified one of the bits correctly as a germanium diode though.
So I tore apart some broken dongle or other from 20 years ago, and lo, there were capacitors and stuff there, but knowing what capacitors used to look like in the dark ages isn't that useful really. It wasn't a very productive day.