Teaching summer school can be a challenge - many kids are loathe to give up their summer fun to come in to school and work. I knew in order to keep the kids engaged that we were going to have to do some really fun activities... enter Makey Makey! Makey Makey kits are super popular in our Makerspace! If you have never heard of these, check out this video... you'll fall in love, just like we have! PRO TIP: Makey Makey kits are available through the Scholastic Resource catalog if you have book fair money to spend! The students were challenged to design and build a video game controller. We followed the engineering and design process, outlined below: I started by giving them a brief tutorial on how the Makey Makey kits work, and we reviewed the basics of electrical circuits in the process. I supplied them with the kits and other materials to use to make the "buttons" on their controllers: water, playdough, aluminum foil, water (in petri dishes), and of course they had each other to use as well. You can also use fruit - pretty much anything that conducts a mild current! The kids used the Makey Makey App website as well as some flash-based old school video games (Super Mario, Super Mario 3, Tetris, etc.) More advanced coders can use Scratch to create their own games to work with the kits, too! Here are some of their creations... I'm so proud of them! Do you think you could use Makey Makey kits in your classroom? Comment below with how - I'd love to hear your thoughts!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
September 2020
Categories
All
|