Solar power brings teachers and schoolchildren of Malawi out of the dark #SolarPower
Solar powered lamps are helping teachers prepare lessons at night and students a chance to read books at night. via the guardian
Young Kennedy is astonished. His face lights up in the single room in the straw-thatched house. So does the book he is reading with his friend, Nellie.
The two excited nine-year-olds from the village of Gumbi in western Malawi have just done what about 600 million others in sub-Saharan Africa have never been able to do – switch on an electric light in their homes to read a book in the dark.
There is a murmur of approval from the small crowd of people craning their heads through the doorway to witness the arrival of solar electricity in the village. “[These] bulbs will change lives. Our days will be longer and nights shorter. We will be like others,” says one mother, Chikumbutso Chaima. “Children will do better at school. They have a future. We have not been forgotten.”
The lamps, provided by the Guardian reader-supported Gumbi education fund, are welcomed, too, at St Martin’s secondary school in Nambuma. “Not only can teachers prepare lessons in the evening, but they can now charge up phones for themselves and others,” says headteacher Acreo Kamera.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python snakes its way on the SparkFun SAMD21 Mini, Hackaday.io, 10k thanks, and Tim’s magazine #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython @circuitpython @micropython @ThePSF @Adafruit
Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !