Supporting you with remote teaching
Tips for teachers supporting students at home
You may already be teaching remotely or thinking about or preparing for it. We appreciate all that teachers do for their students and hope these resources may be useful to you in some way.
It’s great if you are able to let students take a micro:bit home, but many activities can be completed without a physical micro:bit, using the simulator in Microsoft MakeCode.
micro:bit classroom
If you are already using, or planning to use, video streaming tools for remote learning, you can combine them with our free micro:bit classroom tool to run your own live micro:bit coding lessons. Students do not need micro:bit devices to use classroom, they can program the simulator in MakeCode.
How classroom works
- Create your classroom session using your own starter code, our project ideas or lessons.
- While you have micro:bit classroom open in your browser, share the PIN you'll find in the teacher dashboard with your students so they can join your lesson.
- You can share and view students’ code in real time, download their work for review and capture the whole lesson for resuming at a later date.
- It only works for live, real-time lessons when teacher and students are online at the same time.
micro:bit classroom is still in beta, so bear in mind there may be some glitches. We’d love to hear how you use it via our support channel.
This short video shows you how micro:bit classroom works for teachers and students:
micro:bit classroom has been researched and created in partnership with Nominet and the Micro:bit Educational Foundation.
micro:bit feature videos
The micro:bit is a tiny computer designed to teach how hardware sensors and software interact and how computer systems fit together to react to the physical environment. Our short videos explain these concepts in simple terms and may be useful for remote learning.
Setting micro:bit assignments remotely
As well as running live coding lessons with micro:bit classroom, you can set assignments for students to work on in their own time using Google Classroom or other virtual learning environments. You can even embed MakeCode projects in Microsoft Teams assignments. Find out more:
Make it: code it projects
Quick, simple coding projects you can launch in micro:bit classroom or use independently. MakeCode, Python and Scratch programs to turn your micro:bit into games, musical instruments, data loggers and more whilst learning about how computer systems integrate hardware such as sensors with software. Each project has extension ideas. You can filter by level, programming language, learning topic and device feature.
Home learning videos
Six themed sets of easy-to-follow 15 minute activities with short videos to show and tell your students everything they need to know. You can also download printable coding sheets to support independent learning.
