Napier Central School Code Club - micro:bit

The micro:bit (https://microbit.org/) is a small, affordable computer designed for teaching programming and electronics to children. I bought one to evaluate it, and it seems like a good fit for the Code Club I run at Napier Central School. I recently entered a competition to win a set of 10 micro:bits and was successful - we now have enough to use them in in term 4.

The students have been working in Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and Python with some work done on the two Raspberry Pi computers we have. Using the micro:bit will allow the students to:

• Use their Scratch skills to program something that doesn't run on their own computer.

• Disconnect the micro:bit from their computer and move around with it.

• Write programs that can communicate between the micro:bits (using Bluetooth).

• Create projects that extend the micro:bit (basic electronics).

• Understand how programming relates to all the devices in their world (e.g. microwaves).

The current amount of 11 is enough to teach using groups of two, if we got another set of 10 we should almost have enough for everyone in the class (up to 25).