SparkFun Education Blog

2020 Year End Recap

megan.hemmings@sparkfun.com (Megan Hemmings) — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 13:38:00 GMT

2020 is coming to a close, and what a year it has been. To celebrate the end of another year, we're looking back at the most popular posts of the year - the ones you read over and over. The top 5 most popular posts this year were:

Announcing the New micro:bit v2!

derek.runberg@sparkfun.com (Derek Runberg) — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:37:00 GMT

Over the past few years, we have seen the micro:bit grow into one of the most useful programming tools in the classroom. Here at SparkFun, we even developed and released a whole ecosystem of carrier boards and kits for it. The micro:bit became our top selling educational platform within a year of its release. Since then, it has been a steady rock for STEAM education in a time of uncertainty while most students participate in school at home. The micro:bit has been easy to program, easy to administer and affordable enough to send home with students.

Making Machine Learning Accessible for Education

megan.hemmings@sparkfun.com (Megan Hemmings) — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 12:33:00 GMT

If you’ve been wanting to start exploring machine learning with your students but have been turned off by the $100+ price tag, there’s a new board on the block that is worth looking in to: the Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit.At just $59.00, the Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit provides an incredibly inexpensive way to get started with machine learning and artificial intelligence without having to sacrifice power or capabilities.To truly experience any computer science learning, we believe hardware integration is key. This is even more true with artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit is ideal for hands-on learning, allowing students to perceive and interact with the world around them. In addition to this powerful hardware option, NVIDIA offers a large variety of free tutorials, projects and videos that will help you and your students take your AI knowledge to the next level.

Choosing the Best Microcontroller for Machine Learning

megan.hemmings@sparkfun.com (Megan Hemmings) — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 12:23:00 GMT

While 2020 forced many conference to go virtual, one of the unexpected benefits has been the ability for more people to access the presentations. Especially when the conference decides to publicly share them after the event.

Combining the Power of NVIDIA Jetson Nano and Sphero RVR

megan.hemmings@sparkfun.com (Megan Hemmings) — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 12:36:00 GMT

After creating the SparkFun Advanced Autonomous kit for the Sphero RVR last year, we couldn't help but wonder what else we could do to bring more power and functionality to the Sphero RVR. That line of thinking led us to try to combine a few of our robotics offerings into this powerful mashup of the SparkFun AI JetBot kit for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, the Sphero RVR and the aforementioned Advanced Autonomous kit.