Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry PI projects for children?

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Author: James Dutton via Hampshire
Date:  
To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List
CC: James Dutton
Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Raspberry PI projects for children?
On Sat, 22 Apr 2023 at 14:08, Adam John Trickett via Hampshire <
hampshire@???> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Has anyone had any experience with using a Raspberry Pi for a project with
> children?
>
> I can see that there are loads of projects on-line and in magazines, but
> which
> ones actually work well with children?
>
> My wife is working with the town hall to provide IT lessons (mostly
> pensioners) but they would like to do something with children during the
> school holidays.
>
> The ideal projects would be:
> * Doable over 4 days of mornings or afternoons
> * Doesn't require use of soldering irons (weapons)
> * Not strictly attractive to boys or girls
> * Some thing for primary and secondary school age
> * Not silly expensive - we can get grant money but not zillions
>
> I've said I'm happy to give time on the Linux side and I know some
> programming, but I expect it will be more of a plug board kit kind of
> project
> with a pre-written program that they can tinker with.
>
>
>

Hi,

Although I was not involved, a team from work did a STEM activity,
For this, various challengers are given to the children, and then leave it
to them to try and achieve those tasks.
For example, put a PI on a vehicle it can control, and try to get it
through an obstacle course.
The solution was along the lines of first put some sensors on the model
vehicle to let it do some recon and gather a map of the area, and then
program in a course for the vehicle to take based on that map.
The children had to plug everything in correctly (connect the right pins on
the sensor to the right pins on the Pi GPIO etc., choose which sensor they
wished to use), then had to calibrate the sensors. I.e. command vehicle to
move forward 10, and then measure how many mm that was on the ground, and
then once it came across an obstacle, note it down in relation to the
position of the vehicle at the time. Use all that to draw a map, with the
final solution being them filling in a long list of commands to get past
all the obstacles. i.e. forward 10, left 4, forward 12, right 6 etc.

It raised quite a high level of interest and fun and laughter for all the
children.
Note, allow for quite a few bits to get broken along the way.

There were about 9 teams of children on the day, so some friendly
competition.

Kind Regards

James
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