Internet of Things as a mean to motivate freshmen students in the "Facultad de Informática" of the National University of La Plata (UNLP)

• Published in: 2019 38th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC) pp. 1 - 7
• Main Authors: Diaz, Francisco Javier, Osorio, Maria Alejandra, Amadeo, Ana Paola, Lopez, Fernando Esteban
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.11.2019
• Subjects: Arduino; Conferences; Hardware; Internet of Things; IoT; Monitoring; motivation; programming learning; Python
• DOI: 10.1109/SCCC49216.2019.8966415

This article describes the process of including a series of IoT workshops during the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 in the subject "Seminario de Lenguajes opción C" of the Facultad de Informática (Computer Science Faculty) of the UNLP (National University of La Plata). The goal of these workshops were to motivate students in the learning process showing that the C programming language is still current with new technologies. The workshops needed appropiate devices and trained teachers. In the year 2017 Zolertia Z1 devices were used, in 2018 the workshops switched to Arduino Nano boards and finally Duinobot V1.2 boards were used in 2019. The students learnt about hardware, communications and application development. In the year 2017 and 2018 the participant students showed better performance than the ones that did not participate, in 2019 a poll was included. The activity was motivating to students and a contribution to their training. These experiences will determine if IoT can be included as a topic in the subject and through the development of simple specific applications.