We connected the wifi dongle yesterday, and started to program it, only to come up with some network errors. While this set us back a little, I am using this as a teaching moment; the students are learning that not everything goes as smoothly as you would like the first time around with things, and I am having them do some searching on the internet to figure out how we can fix the errors that we got (I am also doing my own research). We're using a Linux based system to program the Raspberry Pi, which is a little different from what we're used to with Windows. For every challenge, there is a great learning opportunity, and this is giving the students experience with an operating system other than Windows or Mac OS.
After we figure out where we went wrong, we are going to be building a Tweeting weather station with the Raspberry Pi. I think that this will be a fun project for the students, and they are enjoying the hands on approach, getting to program and write code.
The other very valuable lesson that the students are learning, but one I'm sure they would prefer to skip over is the value of patience!
