Using a low-cost open source hardware development platform in teaching young students programming skills

The teaching of programming skills to young students is often described by those educators involved as problematic at best. Student issues like mathematical maturity, readiness for complex thought, basic problem solving skills, short attention span especially related to the boredom of traditional programming teaching methodologies, and the lack of exciting problems and their solutions with respect to programming assignments contribute to the angst of many a programming instructor. A small fraction of students who "were just made for programming" always seem to succeed at whatever programming problem is given to them. However, a majority of students, especially precollege and college freshmen tend to have difficulty in overcoming these issues. It is with that observation that something new, in terms of programming pedagogy, needed to be investigated by this paper's authors. An ideal opportunity requiring successful programming instruction for 7-12 graders in the local metropolitan area presented itself in the winter of 2012. The students were involved in a statewide competition where groups of students self-selected into project options offered by various sponsoring institutions. Under the "Technology" choice heading of the state program, the student team and the instructor agreed to program a microprocessor to send messages in International Morse Code. The object of the exercise was to learn basic programming skills and to apply them to solving a problem. The hook was to do something brand new the students had never engaged in, keeping their attention on the end goal, and to see the immediate real-time results of some programming effort along the development cycle as the completed final program took form. The effort was a resounding success; the students learned in a few Saturday morning sessions more about programming than the authors have experienced over weeks of effort in traditional programming classes at the college freshman level.