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Nimue

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Joined: 06/08/2020
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 425

Posted: 12:32pm 09 Feb 2023

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Afternoon(at least in the UK).

Today I used the PicoMite and an LCD backpack (huge thanks to Peter for adding driver support for the 128x128 Waveshare I used) in class for the first time.

What you see below is the 'mite using MATH(RAND) to estimate PI - currently on iteration 7100 with PI of 3.138.

What worked especially well was moving from coding this using MMBasic (Windows) to coding the same on the 'mite. Students learned the concept of "porting" from one environment to another, plus the ease of interfacing with hardware.

I just wanted to publicly thank all those in MMBasic / CMM2 / Mighty 'Mites land (and especially to Geoff and Peter) who make engaging with this (dare I say it) ecosystem such a pleasure and for allowing me the excuse to introduce BASIC back into the education system.

Interesting side note: One of the driving forces behind my use of 'mites has been the fact that whilst education laptops seem to be locked down more than those in the MOD (literally can't do anything without promising the next seven generations of unborn males to the IT team and then they unlock the bare minimum in case I accidently nuke Russia.), in all cases so far, terminal access has been left enabled. In many cases with terminal software already installed -- in those cases where no terminal, we just use KiTTY which has a portable version that runs straight from USB stick.

For the teachers using the terminal seems to make them think that they are drilling into the mite in some way -- makes them think that are actually coding the hardware -- if that makes sesne.

Someone even coined the term KittyMite -- which was ok, but we abandoned it when someone Googled catamite -- and that triggered all the web filtering in the school.

Edited 2023-02-09 22:32 by Nimue

Entropy is not what it used to be

JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4147

Posted: 01:33pm 10 Feb 2023

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Nimue said in those cases where no terminal, we just use KiTTY which has a portable version that runs straight from USB stick.

Ooh, maybe don't post that publicly in case they realise they should lock USB down!!

edit: just looked up that cata... word. Every day's a school-day LOL

John
Edited 2023-02-10 23:33 by JohnS

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