Course Kits
As we were designing our courses it became clear that additional student resources are needed. Most Teachers Network courses are hands-on classes with home lab work. Students must have the necessary tools to learn the material. These resources, or student kits, provide the tools for the home or computer related work. In many cases they can also be used for school based laboratory use. Course kits and other materials (workstations, etc) must be affordably priced, easy to purchase, stock and distribute to students and in the classroom, while at the same time being tightly aligned with the course requirements. Acquiring additional course materials should be no more difficult than picking up a new textbook. We offer standard packages to compliment the courses presented here but we also work with schools and districts to adapt the available packages to meet their unique requirements.
Whenever possible products found with other suppliers are recommended as long as they meet our educational and cost requirements. When this is not possible we build and provide low-cost kits for the courses needing them. Many existing kits from electronics and computer suppliers are either not well matched to our courses and/or are very expensive. Our courses are designed to re-use as many of the parts from previous courses to to keep costs as low as possible. The kits are designed in a modular fashion so that we can mix and match modules to meet the needs of specific classes at the lowest cost point. Kits requirements are listed with each course description. The contents of each kit is listed in each kit description on this site. Students can always choose not to purchase the kits if they have the necessary parts on-hand or if it makes more sense for them to find the parts locally.
Our course kits are broken down into four initial categories. We envision these to be expanded over time as we develop materials for other subjects. Should your school or institution need other kits let us know and we can work together to make available additional resources. The existing categories:
- Electronics – discrete components, wiring parts, batteries and other small parts and kit bundles
- Maker Parts – micro-controllers, sensors, displays, project chassis, kit bundles and more
- Tools – common electronics tools, small test equipment, soldering stations, and tool kits
- Workstations and Accessories – custom build to order inexpensive workstation solutions
Specific course kits will be announced in the coming weeks and rolled out together with new courses. Should your school or institution need any changes, custom packaging or additional prepackaged course material, let us know we’ll do our best to help.
Electronics
Discrete electronic components (resistors, capacitors, LED’s, etc), wiring parts (wire, breadboards, etc), batteries, and other small parts and kit bundles appear here. Coming soon.
Maker Parts
A wide range of maker parts will end up here including micro-controllers (Arduino, Pico, ESP32 and similar), sensors, displays, project chassis and more. Project and course bundles will also be available. Coming soon.
Tools
Common electronics tools such as needle nose pliers, cutters, wire strippers, etc as well as starter tool kit bundles. Small test equipment including basic multimeters, current meters, soldering irons and stations, anti-static mats also included. Coming soon.
Workstations and Accessories
Most Teachers Network ECE courses require access to a properly configured Linux workstation. This can be a problem for beginning ECE students who are unable to build and configure their own machines. Schools often face similar problems as their staff may not have specific Linux expertise, and more times than not don’t have the time or other resources to devote to workstation procurement, build, configuration and test. Teachers Network solves these problems by providing inexpensive custom built to order workstations for students, schools and districts based on their individual requirements. Each machine is configured and fully tested prior to final packaging and shipping. All that has to be done is to plug them in and run through the first boot wizard.
All workstations come with the following: a Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ or 4B computer, case / enclosure, high performance microSD memory pre-loaded and tested with the selected operating system, and a customer selected power adapter. Additional accessories such as cables, adapters, power supplies, replacement TF cards, wireless keyboard and mouse combinations, USB hubs and others can be bundled into each package as needed. Everything except for a monitor can be bundled in each package making deployment quick and worry free. more…
