Useful learning resources

Getting Started With Arduino 3rd Edition by Massimo Banzi and Michael Shiloh
A short and practical guide to the getting started with the Arduino platform. Explains what you might use it for, the principles behind the platform, some basic code and electronics guidance.
Make: Electronics by Charles Platt A very hands on guide to the fundamentals of electronics. Assumes no prior knowledge and uses some great real world examples and practical applications.
Practical Electronics for Inventors 3rd Edition by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk
A more in-depth look at electronics. Very good for those with a grasp on the basic topics.

Learn at Sparkfun
Learn at Adafruit
Kobakant DIY - Lovely guides for DIY e-textiles and conductive material-based components and projects
Arduino Stackexchange - forum for asking questions

Virtual Learning and Emulation

[TinkerCAD] (https://www.tinkercad.com/) - From AutoDesk, can simulate your rduino and componants and write code and test before physically building. Also very easy to use 3D CAD utility for designing//building STL filrs for 3D Printing.

[Circuit IO] (https://www.circuito.io/) - Essentially a shop, but has a great app that lets you drag & drop componants onto a simulator with a reange of embedded computing modules and program them. It has a functionality which arranges ports and gives you the simple basic programming and libraries for those componats. Bear in mind, you should be programming for your projects yourself and submissions using the auto-generated code should explicityly say where the code came from (we have a plagiarism detection system which will disqualify your marks if you do not state your code came from here).