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This is the board I came up with. No, it's not much to look at, and it doesn't do much. Just 8 buttons, 8 red LEDs, and two RGB LEDs. But it makes the learning experience a little less time consuming. There is already a resistor for each LED, and all the commons are brought together for one connection to ground on whatever board (Arduino, RPi, etc.). You don't have to 'build' your I/O circuits, just connect them. (but you still have to have some understanding as to how they work).

Now this is just a start. I'm working on some lessons and examples using the Arduino Uno right now, and will start working on some Raspberry Pi examples soon as well.

Stay Tuned!