[jvvw]

I've got quite a bit of experience of doing coding stuff with kids - I set up the CoderDojo at The National Museum of Computing in the UK (paused at the moment), have run a Code Club at our local library, have two kids myself and am a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator. I've done quite a lot of Microbit sessions for kids and a handful of Raspberry Pi ones.

I really like Microbits for all sorts of reasons and they fill a very different place in the ecosystem to a Raspberry Pi. They are cheap and have a low entry threshold - I can get a kid doing interesting stuff on a Microbit in a matter of minutes, but there's still interesting potential if you want to go in an electronics direction with them. They are also fairly indestructible so you can let kids tinker with them more. There's not much you can do with a Raspberry Pi that you can't do on other computers without buying something like a SenseHAT or going down the electronics route. It's hard to do electronics with kids without close to one-to-one supervision.

I can see for older kids with tech-savvy parents who are willing to invest in electronics components etc. there are more possibilities with a Raspberry Pi and there is obviously lots of fun stuff you can do that you could never do with Microbits, but I definitely don't see them as direct competitors.

The other thing I will say is that I have noticed a bit of a personality thing too - some kids get super-excited by making the LEDs on a Microbit light up and so on and some really don't care. Different types of coding definitely appeal different to different children.

[jvvw]

I should add that it's actually the speaker and microphone that I am most excited about in terms of the potential for interesting new projects for kids. Crocodile clips and headphones were quite cumbersome, especially for kids. Although I might have to get used to more noise in our sessions!