[Discuss] Gift for a 9-year-old engineer?

[gmongardi at napc.com (Grant Mongardi)]

I'll suggest a Digispark Arduino kit. Using the Arduino App they are
incredibly easy to program and you can get dozens of "shield" kits with
them. This would teach both programming and electronics. There is a starter
kit for $17:
http://digistump.com/products/48

Although I bought a handful of them for that from Amazon, but they appear
to be unavailable now:
http://www.amazon.com/Eztronics-Corp%C2%AE-Digispark-Kickstarter-Development/dp/B013OPQSEY?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Grant M.


On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Daniel Barrett <dbarrett at blazemonger.com>
wrote:

>
> Any suggestions for a birthday present for a 9-year-old budding
> software engineer?  My nephew has been writing programs on Scratch
> (scratch.mit.edu), a programming site for kids, and teaching himself
> HTML and CSS. He also loves taking electronics apart and building
> stuff, and he blogs about topics like Apple's phone encryption on his
> own web site. The little guy has a true passion for this stuff.
>
> I thought about getting him a Raspberry Pi kit, but I haven't used one
> myself and don't know if he could get it working by himself. (His
> parents have no background and I live 3000 miles away. Good idea or
> not?) I also thought about this book:
>
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Python-Kids-Playful-Introduction-Programming/dp/1593274076
>
> but at age 9, maybe books aren't the most exciting gifts?
>
> Last year, his choice of gift was "computer consulting hours with his
> Uncle Dan" (me) by Skype. This year he says, "He can surprise me. I
> trust Uncle Dan." Talk about pressure! :-)
>
> His home computers are all Macs, if that matters.
>
> Any tips appreciated. Thank you.
>
> --
> Dan Barrett
> dbarrett at blazemonger.com
>
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>



-- 

Grant Mongardi
Senior Systems Engineer
NAPC
gmongardi at napc.comhttp://www.napc.com/blog.napc.com
781.894.3114 phone
781.894.3997 fax

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