Digital Sandbox (Arduino Programmers Kit) – Curriculum Exchange

Abstract

Digital Sandbox: Computer Science and Arduino Brief 100 word description Teaching Arduino and microcontrollers in a traditional computer science course is both a blessing and a potential distraction. Requiring students to learn concepts around arrays, for loops, and recursion at the same time as breadboarding, wiring, and circuitry often times presents a challenge. To keep our focus on computer science and the programming algorithms, we developed an open­source Arduino compatible platform called the Digital Sandbox that is pre­wired with several peripheral Inputs and Output devices. We have a set of activities and experiments for students to explore in both a virtual (on­line) environment as well as a physical hands­on environment. Description of materials: Each activity is scaffolded by introducing only one or two new concepts. We layer the activities so that students are introduced gradually to concepts around computer science and programming. The Digital Sandbox has 5 LEDs pre­wired, an RGB LED, and multiple sensors to allow students to interact with hardware by writing their own control software. In addition, we have developed a free, on­line virtual simulation environment of the same board. This virtual simulation allows all students to learn Arduino programming and computer science concepts without any need of hardware. We are excited to provide this as an option for the code.org Hour of Code this year.