Idaho Discovery Week
This summer my wife Moema and I started a summer learning camp called Idaho Discovery Week. We hosted three classes with Moema taking intro to drawing and intro to Japanese, while I taught electronics and circuitry. In total, over 100 students signed up for our classes!
What we learned in class
I built the class around the Arduino Nano. We started with the boring part first, basic physics: voltage, current, resistance, what a circuit even is. After that every new component got introduced through a project. Here's some of my favorites:
- Digital piano — a 4x4 matrix keypad and a passive buzzer. Each button plays a note.
- Dinosaur game — a recreation of the one from Google Chrome, played with real buttons.
- Stoplight circuit — I thought this way a good way to teach logic gates.
- Star Wars spaceship game — the final project. Everyone built one and got to take it home.
A simple breadboard circuit game created by one of my students
What I got out of it
People always say the best way to learn something is to teach it. I've heard that for years but I understand it a lot better now. When a 14-year-old asks you why the led is backwards, "because it does" isn't an answer. You have to really know. Three months of that and I understand microcontrollers way better than I did going in.
Moema and I and our army of internet friendly sunglasses kids showing off their boards after class
All of the students' boards lined up on the classroom windowsill after class
It was a lot of work and I was tired by the end of it. But seeing a windowsill full of boards that kids built themselves made it worth it. We're definitely doing it again someday.