One of the things that I adore about Raspberry Pis is that they are so versatile. You can use them to teach tweens and teens about programming and coding, you can use them to teach the basics of computers, and you can use them to teach hardware programming. It completely blows their mind that this hand-held box the size of their phone can do all of these different things, and the ways you can use Pis in library programming are limited only by your imagination and the amount of time you can put into learning the Pis.
The most popular set of programs that I held last summer was a hardware based session where we taught tweens and teens about electronic circuits, sounds, and putting everything together. The first part of the lesson was teaching them how to wire the breadboard with the mini LED sensors and buttons to turn the lights on and off.
The second part was combining the circuit with Scratch programming in order to have the Pis create sound when the circuit was connected.
The final part tied everything together- LED circuits, buttons, and software to make a sound and light show that they created on their own. We had sample music loaded that they could use (various Christmas carols, among other things) and their reactions once everything was pulled together was just amazing.
I’ve put the entire set of notes for the three part class below. They are *my* notes, so remember that they are extremely technical, and not for tweens and teens. Any questions about how to do the program, or what I did, please feel free to contact me.