Everyone who’s paths ever crossed with learning electronics will agree on one thing – there is no better way of mastering this matter than practice. There are of course disciplines, that base mostly on theory supported by some minor research. Electronics, however, needs to be taught with hand on experiments.
TME Education is a project established by Transfer Multisort Elektronik, a global distributor of electronic components, in 2016 and it aims to promote and facilitate access to technology-related knowledge in regions, where the proper resources are not easy to obtain.
The programme’s activities are based on cooperation with schools and organizing specialized training conducted by the project’s ambassadors – the local teachers representing TME Education in their regions. After two years after having started in Ghana, TME Education has now such representatives in ten African countries and India.
One of its main targets is to infuse education with the most practice possible. This is why it creates its own educational kits.
TME Edu KIT was the first tool designed by TME Education. This Arduino based solution is aimed at those, who would like to start their journey with programming. Its user-friendly design, compact construction and embedded peripherals permit to skip jumper wires and a breadboard. It is enough to simply connect the board to a computer, download free Arduino IDE and start programming.
The student can easily see the effects of his coding on the device as the board is equipped in various sensors, LEDs, buzzer, switches and many others. Over a year of experience with this tool during dozens of workshops in Africa plus positive feedback from the Lodz University of Technology encouraged TME Education to develop it and create Arduino based TME Educational Board rev. 2.
The new version got enriched by OLED display, programmable RGB LEDs, microphone and many others. Moreover, it can be controlled by an android application as it can receive commands and information via Bluetooth. As a response to high interest in the first revision of the kit, TME decided to make TME-EDU-ARD-2 an educational product available for sales.
TME Education is on the verge of releasing its most complex learning tool – The Practical Guide to Electronic Circuits – a complete coursebook that is followed up by a design kit. Its aim is to encourage the user to verify the newly acquired knowledge I real life and solidify it.
TME Education designed also tools for more advanced learners. TME’s Electronics Experiments Kit is a set of over 300 elements that allow creating several projects at the same time. The inclusion of a breadboard enables prototyping while several pcs boards make it possible to fix the circuits of the users like.
The possibilities of creating different projects are limitless, however, if the students need some inspiration, the Kit comes with a book that contains eight exemplary experiments to start with.
TME Education is all about practice. It keeps on developing new tools to make electronics more student-friendly. During the workshops, the students have a chance to conducts experiments with their own hands and see the effects of the codes they are creating. As one of the project’s ambassadors said – “you can only master it if you touch it.”