As new paradigms, such as pervasive computing and ambient intelligence change the nature of the computer application market place, so do the skills and educational technology needed by students and teachers. The once dominant PC now finds itself outnumbered by several orders of magnitude by much smaller and cheaper embedded computers which can extend the internet from being just a means of connecting personal computers together, to enabling a world of connected “things”; the so-called “internet of things”. In this world hundreds and even thousands of tiny service providing embedded-computers deliver a variety of services to us (some physical, some information) in ways that enable exciting new lifestyles and business opportunities. Applications range from the creation of digital homes (with their myriad of high-tech appliance), smart vehicles (cars aeroplanes & robotics) through to telecommunications (mobile phones, personal navigation or mobile learning). At the heart of this new technology is the “embedded-computer” which, from a software developers perspective, is significantly different to conventional desktop computers as they need to operate in real-time with computationally small resources and, in general, don't have inbuilt keyboards, displays or programming tools. All these factors conspire to bring significantly different educational and training requirements from older generations of computers, such as PCs. In this paper we examine these issues and introduce a set of modularised tools to arm universities, and other training institutions, with the means to support the acquisition of these key skills by students in a motivating and educationally sound way.