Abstract
Micro:bits have educational purposes, these Single Board Computers (SBC) were based on BBC’s idea and developed by their supervision. The idea behind it was to give students an insight into programming and engineering science, encouraging them to choose their field connected to the STEM areas. These microcontrollers are ideal for supporting kids in learning the foundations of programming playfully. With the extensions, students experience the basics of robotics too.
The T@T Labor at Eötvös Loránd University has been working on experience-based education for decades. In the teacher training program and public education, the team is trying to use and introduce devices which can improve computational thinking skills. To achieve this, the University is coming up and organizes different projects.
The “Micro:bit botorkálás” (“Wandering micro:bits”) was launched in October 2017. The aim of the program to send micro:bits as many schools as possible. Students can meet programming in a game-based way either inside the classroom or in after-school activities. Our 23 kits contain 10 micro:bits. The registered schools can use the kits free for a month, after that they must post the kit to the next. Till now (07/2019) over 15000 students in 160 schools met the kits.
We prepared a research survey to assess the effectiveness and success of our initiative, and to get to know the teacher’s motivation and impressions.
In our article, we summarize and share our experiences on this device, based on those reports we got from the participating schools and the completed questionnaires (N = 78).
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Notes
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National event showcasing various professions.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to our University (Faculty of Informatics at ELTE), the Hungarian office of ARM and Málna PC for their support and for funding this initiative.
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Abonyi-Tóth, A., Pluhár, Z. (2019). Wandering Micro:bits in the Public Education of Hungary. In: Pozdniakov, S., Dagienė, V. (eds) Informatics in Schools. New Ideas in School Informatics. ISSEP 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11913. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33759-9_15
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