Hello I decided to make an adobe voice clip (link below) to talk about my experience with makey makey. I had a lot of fun. I also wanted to share with you some ideas that I found on intractable that I would love to try. Its just a matter of rounding up the materials to do them.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Makey-Makey-Interactive-Painting/
.... as soon as my own makey makey comes in I will try making this dance dance revolution game controller!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Makey-Makey-Dance-Revolution/
Click here to hear about My Experience With Makey Makey
http://www.instructables.com/id/Makey-Makey-Interactive-Painting/
.... as soon as my own makey makey comes in I will try making this dance dance revolution game controller!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Makey-Makey-Dance-Revolution/
Click here to hear about My Experience With Makey Makey
Playing with Chibitronics
In other making this week I played with chibitronics. I want to thank Pam Douglas for letting me use some of her materials to play with. We had a lot of fun making cards that light up to get acquainted with these fun little stick on circuit makers. We also had a great discussion around the curriculum connections to art and science. One thing that can be a set back for some educators is the cost of kits such as chibitrontics. The cost of a class kit is around $110 and they are not quite reusable. You might get a way with reusing the little lights, but I'm not 100% sure they would work. I started thinking about ways to hack the materials of this acitivity to make it more cost effective. I started by ordering 24 stick on LED lights for $30 including shipping off amazon.ca and thought about using aluminum tape instead of copper tape for about $4 from home depot. If anyone knows where to get the lights at a lower rate this would be much appreciated.
Pam and her son's angler fish card.
I thought using chibitronics would be a great transition lesson from a Grade 6 circuits unit to the space unit. I found great instructions for making star formations and constellations on instructables and made the big dipper circuit using my hacked materials. I got the lights off amazon. I also used aluminum tape that I found in my house alligator clips and a 9V battery. to create this project. As a teacher you could try having students bring in their own batteries to try different voltages on a circuit. If I did this project in a grade 6 classroom I would have the students try to pick their star sign and map out their own circuits. For the assessment piece I would have them tell me what kind of circuit they had to use and what problems arose in the making of their circuit and how they solved it. I would do a gallery walk for students to see and discuss each others projects. To extend the project I would add an inquiry piece by having the students research and present information on their constellation.
http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Constellations-using-Chibitronics/
http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Constellations-using-Chibitronics/