Extensive use of various types of IoT devices has resulted in high demand for developers with IoT skills. We have identified the challenges facing IoT developers and designed suitable student projects that aim to address these challenges. It is our experience, that it is important to match the IoT platform used for the project to the skills of the students to achieve optimal learning outcomes. In this paper, we describe two case studies that use high-quality modular IoT kits to accelerate the learning process and to allow students with relatively low technical skills to implement working solutions to real-world problems.