21st Century Learning and Teaching

IoT-powered platform Particle has announced a collaboration with Microsoft to expand its suite of IoT development tools with the introduction of Particle Workbench, which aims to accelerate the time to market for IoT products.

The Particle Workbench will leverage Microsoft's code editor studio, Visual Studio Code, which according to Particle will offer IoT developers an "all-in-one and ready-to-use out-of-the-box experience to develop, program and debug professional-grade apps."

Particle CEO and co-founder, Zach Supalla said: "Our vision is to provide a fully integrated, seamless platform for developers to build the best IoT products possible, without the need to piece together individual costly features.

"We made the choice to work with Microsoft on the release of Particle Workbench in response to the urging of our customers who wanted access to a robust desktop development tool. Microsoft's leadership in building developer experiences and commitment to open source made them a natural choice," he added.

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Microsoft MakeCode is a free, open-source Block and JavaScript learn-to-code editor that promotes a more inclusive approach to computing education.

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If you want to build your own gadgets using the Raspberry Pi but don't have the kit or even a Pi, there could soon be another way to get started.

Microsoft is building an online Raspberry Pi simulator that allows users to write code to control emulated hardware, and that currently lets users interact with an LED and collect data from a sensor.

The simulator shows a graphic of a Pi wired to a combined humidity, temperature, pressure sensor and a red LED via a breadboard, a plug board that allows circuits to be wired together rapidly. Users can type in a side panel to enter Node.js JavaScript code, which can be used to control the LED and collect dummy data from the simulated sensor. That code can be executed using a command line at the base of the panel.

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Microsoft has unveiled its latest research project today, Project Zanzibar. It’s a smart mat that’s designed to blend the digital and physical worlds by sensing touch, gestures, and objects. A team of researchers, with a love of toys, created the project at Microsoft’s research labs in the UK. The mat folds and combines sensing, near field communication (NFC), and multi-touch to imagine a future where you could place objects on this smart mat and play games.

Microsoft’s video (above) demonstrates a number of different games that track the position, movement, and orientation of objects — all thanks to NFC stickers. The smart mat, that reminds me of the Surface Music Cover, can even detect inputs like button presses, and works with existing devices via Bluetooth. While the software maker demonstrates basic games for learning, programming, and augmented reality, this looks like the perfect hardware to combine the company’s Minecraft game with real-world Lego blocks. Objects can be easily tagged with NFC stickers, so you could stack them and have the mat translate that physical object into Minecraft.

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Microsoft offers STEM resources to help educators engage students with project-based lessons that compliment current STEM curriculum. A small incubation team inside of Microsoft focuses on developing next generation hardware, software, and services for K-12 education. Our goal is to support teachers in building inquiry and project-based activities that embed computational and design thinking into existing middle school curriculum.

We want to democratize STEM for 21st century learners and demonstrate how all schools can provide affordable opportunities to bring science in the classroom.

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Mit einer angepassten Android-Version will Google auf den Raspberry Pi. Das vom Unternehmen auf den Namen Android Things getaufte System konkurriert hier unter anderem mit Microsofts Windows 10-Version für den Bastel-Rechner.

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