Date: February 23rd, 2009

To: Margaret Murphy

From: David DiPaola

Subject: Presentation Outline

	In order to provide the students of Monroe Community College with more opportunities to succeed, I propose that the Dragon12 development boards used in the CSC 202 - Assembly Language with Embedded Microcontrollers class be replaced with Arduino development boards, which are available to students at a much lower cost.

Graphic showing the Arduino Duemilanove

Key concepts:
•	Arduinos with the appropriate accessories are priced at levels most students can afford. (~$50) (A Dragon12’s educational price is ~$150)
o	The price of the boards can be subsidized by lab fees, thus eliminating the monetary cost of transitioning from the Dragon12 boards.

•	The ATMega microcontrollers are based on a RISC concept (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) which makes them both easier to learn, and closer in similarity to devices “out in the field” that real people write programs for.

Graphic showing zoomed out pages of all the instructions for the HCS12 and ATMega168, illustrating the lower number of instructions for the ‘168.

o	While the instruction set and memory sizes are diminished compared to the HCS12, (the microcontroller in the Dragon12) they are more than sufficient for the course and beyond.

•	Documentation and code for the development board and accessories is free, widely available, and under reasonable license agreements. (GNU GPL) (No need to buy an approximately $100 book)
o	The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) runs on the big three major operating systems. (Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux) On Linux, it even runs on machines which use a processor that is no the typical Intel x86. This removes the barrier that non-Windows using students face, since they can use exactly the same program and interface that everyone else uses. This reduces the “you’re on your own” mentality previously communicated in this class to non-Windows users.

Graphic showing the Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux logos

•	Since students can own their own boards, they can bring them home to do long projects or to tinker with them. Tinkering is an important aspect of assembly language programming, as it allows students to explore the flexibility of a system beyond the scope of what can be mentioned in a limited lecture or lab period.

Graphic of an electronic hobbyist with an oscilloscope or soldering iron, perhaps writing code.

o	Even if students were to lose their board, there are many ways to purchase replacements online or potentially through MCC, thus students need not be constrained to dealing with the school, and the school may not have to deal as much with students. 

•	Students could also store their boards in the existing lab room to prevent loss.

I feel that I’ve made it abundantly clear that if MCC can adapt to this new technology, that the Arduino would become a much more viable alternative to the overly expensive Dragon12 development boards and would allow for students to express their skills in a much greater and profound way.