Open hardware makes science education fun

Brown Dog Gadgets

© Lead Image © margaritatkahcenko, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © margaritatkahcenko, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 207/2018
Author(s):

Brown Dog Gadgets is making science education more accessible and affordable with open hardware.

Free software and the maker movement have always been closely connected to education. In the last few years, open hardware has started to strengthen this connection. A case in point is Brown Dog Gadgets [1], a small company dedicated to making science accessible. The company's latest crowdfunded project is Crazy Circuits [2], kits of Lego-compatible circuit boards and other electronic components and a growing array of projects ranging from what founder Joshua Zimmerman describes as an "evil Cylon pumpkin" to basic Arduino programming (Figure 1).

Figure 1: An Arduino programming project.

A few yeas ago, Zimmerman was a middle school science teacher in Milwaukee, Minnesota. "My classroom had a really small budget – it was my salary. I was always looking for fun science projects for my students and myself. I would find projects on Instructables.com and YouTube and then implement them in my classroom and after-school science club. I was using the open source projects that were out there, and then I started posting them back on Instructables.com with better instructions and teaching points assigned to them."

[...]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Kroah-Hartman Attacks Canonical

    Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote address at the Linux Plumbers Convention 2008 was officially about the Linux Ecosystem, but started as a direct attack on Ubuntu developer Canonical. He claims that the company contributes next to nothing to kernel development.

    more »
  • Free Software Projects

    Free/​Open Source isn’t just about software, it’s also about hardware. Open hardware projects are proliferating, and just like open source software, you can get started inexpensively. Here are three projects that are fun, useful, and suitable for beginners to embedded programming, robotics, and building electronic devices.

    more »
  • Skolelinux for Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate Schools

    From now on, the schools in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate federal state will be running Skolelinux on their computers, based on a decision made a year ago. The project is now announcing its next phase.

    more »
  • K-12 Computer Science – Barriers (and how to overcome them)
    more »
  • Gnublin

    Embedded Linux doesn’t have to be rocket science, which the Gnublin board clearly shows. If you want to learn how to read sensors, flip switches, and switch LEDs on ARM Linux, this tiny machine is perfect for your research.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus