The president’s proposed initiatives are a good start in helping to revitalize manufacturing, but they don’t go nearly far enough. In his State of the Union remarks, President Obama rightly linked domestic manufacturing to overall competitiveness and highlighted how far we still need to go to spur our industrial recovery. As we at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation have noted, the U.S. lost 5.6 million manufacturing jobs in the 2000s. But most importantly, President Obama laid out an agenda for renewal that focused on government support of innovation, R&D, and productivity.
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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
