Information for Educators and Educational Institutions

Teachers hold the key to unlocking the student’s mind. By teaching your students the art of programming and software development, you are giving them the advantage in future business.

We know that teachers very often feel confined by set a syllabus and that it is easy to become disillusioned when trying to teach students the same theory over and over, while the students become bored with not seeing any quick results. Having spoken with teachers at all levels of education, one of the key points they made was that the student loses interest in the subject or cannot translate the subject into everyday life. 

Most of the worlds greatest software developers have started their learning between the ages of 10 and 16. This is a key age in which pupils soak up the information and use it most creatively, but the opportunity it is being missed by many.

Our course is based on the latest ‘Visual Designer‘ module for the Proteus Design Suite software from British company Labcenter Electronics. Proteus is already used by hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide (and is even legislated as ‘required learning’ in France). The software uses high level VSM simulation and includes a drag-and-drop flowchart editor. It houses dozens of virtual electronic boards which can be pieced together, such as sensor modules and display boards; allowing software to be written and electronics to be pieced together, and then simulated in real-time on the computer. While you never need to use a single piece of physical hardware, the ‘real life’ hardware – if available – can be programmed from the software at the click of a button. Students can have a working piece of hardware, which they have programmed to their own specifications, up and running in less than a couple of hours. This allows the students to progress in their learning while quickly seeing the real world results of their work. They can learn how to design and build limitless projects; simulating them and interacting with them in real-time, and deploying them to real-world hardware if available. In fact, Visual Designer’s recent world-wide student competition had students designing systems for heart monitors, medical drip monitors, greenhouse and grow box watering systems, weather stations, voice recognition systems, air quality controllers and even simple computer games.

While you never need to leave the flowchart methods of programming, once the concepts are mastered the student may well wish to learn the coding aspect and this is introduced at the end of the course. Students can easily view the written ‘C Code’ generated by their flow charts, use it to learn and understand the syntax of written computer code, and start editing and simulating their own ‘C Code’.

The introductory course book, in combination with the Visual Designer software, has been designed to facilitate learning for those with absolutely no prior knowledge of electronics or programming and is therefore suitable for even the beginner student. It is designed to be easy to follow and a student can learn at his own pace, but with unlimited room for creative exploration and invention. The structure of the course allows you to support and coach the students, helping them to unlock and implement their individual creative ideas as educators aspire to do; giving you the freedom to do what you do best – teach and inspire.