The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Outreach together with ECE Club organized an Introduction to Arduino in Tinkercad interactive workshop on 9 and 10 December 2020. The aim of the workshop was to introduce the Arduino microcontroller and common uses of such embedded systems to secondary school students via the Autodesk Tinkercad platform. Students experienced making and simulating their own interactive systems on the Tinkercad platform.
The workshop was conducted virtually over 2 days (2pm-6pm) via Zoom. 60 secondary 2 to secondary 3 students from 8 different schools, namely Beatty Secondary School, Dunman High School, Hwa Chong Institution, NUS High School, Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ Secondary School, Raffles Girls’ Secondary School, River Valley High School and Temasek Junior College, participated in this workshop. The students were divided into 13 groups and each group was mentored by an NUS Buddy, an undergraduate Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering student from ECE. The NUS Buddy acts as a mentor to the group of student participants and guides his/her group of students through the planned hands-on activities.
The workshop started with a lively welcome by Dr Chua Dingjuan, followed by an opening speech by Prof Arthur Tay, Deputy Head for External Relations and Outreach, ECE. This was followed by an introduction and brief lecture by Dr Rajesh Panicker on the Arduino and Tinkercad platforms. Students then in their groups worked in separate breakout rooms for more detailed and in-depth guidance from their NUS Buddy. The end of the workshop concluded with an exciting Kahoot Quiz on Arduino where the top ten students walked away with a $10 Popular voucher!
