raspberry vs arduino for 6th graders

[stockrex]

Greetings,

Being an ex kernel programmer, sometimes I tend to over complicate simple things.

I need advice to 2 items:

1. Which platform will be simplest for 6th graders to tinker with
2. Which platform has simple project that 6th graders can attempt and have fun with and not get frustrated.

I am volunteering for my kids class to help them with this and probably buy few of these for the class to have fun it.

 

[fredfactory]

For 6th graders, wouldn't a system that simply taught them programmable instructions in an easy hardware environment really be best? Like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms_EV3
Then when 8th or 9th grade comes around, they can begin to get familiar with deeper hardware concepts.
Like you say, avoid confusion early in life, build up complexity gradually, User Friendly for a while, right?!

 

[stockrex]

fred,
hmm, lego looks cool and easy but $$$ is beyond what the district can afford or I.
Though I am volunteering for my kids class, the middle school students will use the hardware, so you have 6, 7 and 8th grader.

I want to start them off this year and continue next year....

 

[Jimzz]

I lean toward the newer raspberry. It has a newer gen chip so the coding they would do on that would be almost the same as what they would do on any other ARM based system like Android or Windows for ARM.

 

[Quest]

I've bought a couple of Raspberry pi for my sons (oldest one is 8 yrs old), and will teach him how to program in python shortly (coming this summer).

I came from a fortran background, with C/C++. While I appreciate assembler language (that's what I dad did before), I have long forego the thought of utilising low-level language nowadays, esp, when it comes to making programming learning fun/intuitive. Assembler language is not particularly human-friendly, so it's best left until my kids have mastered the junior level of more human-friendly programming first....

Q.