Makey Makey Interactive Poster

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Updated September 2021
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The curriculum is overloaded, how to integrate new technologies and coding without adding additional content. The key is to integrate the ideas. This lesson took 2 hours and we completed it in one 2 hour session.

Ensure you have equity with access to all tasks eg: boys don't dominate the using the technology while girls colour. Observe your students as some may need encouragement to do the coding and connect the Makey Makey. They may need some concrete scaffolding eg: provide them with a sample of code.

Incomplete poster that shows
the beginnings of lifecycle.

Goal: Create a poster that illustrates the lifecycle of a tomato.

The poster could be used to cover any outcomes or lesson ideas. 

My Prelearning: 3 lessons

  • Research on lifecycle of tomato
  • Art lesson - still life on how to draw a tomato
  • Design the Code - talk through with the students how to plant their code.
    • When I press space
    • Stop all other sounds
    • Play my recording
  • Follow up lesson about components of the digital system, parts of the Makey Makey

Resources:


Scratch Coding blocks - Teacher cheat sheet ☺






Connecting the Makey Makey to
split pins on rear side of poster

Procedure:

  1. Draw the tomato lifecycle on the cardboard.
  2. Insert 1 split pin at each stage of the life cycle (5 for coding above).
  3. Insert 1 extra split pin on the poster for the earth wire.
  4. Log into scratch and reproduce blocks above.
  5. Record a description for each stage of the life cycle. 
  6. Connect the Makey Makey to the split pins on the back of the poster.
  7. Ensure the points on the Makey Makey match the events in Scratch.
  8. Connect the earth on the Makey Makey to the extra split pin on the poster.
  9. Test
  10. Display

Curriculum

Australian Curriculum
ACTDIP004 - algorithms
ACSSU072 - life cycles
ACTDIK007 - Digital Systems

NSW
ST2-3DP-T Algorithms
ST2-4LW-S Living Things
ST2-11DI-T Digital Systems

References
Original idea credited to M. Levins at ICTNSW workshop.

Updated September 2021

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