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Digital lab STEAM Station!
Bloxels
Why play Mindcraft when you can create your own video game or story?
Why play Mindcraft when you can create your own video game or story?
LittleBits
I have always felt an ongoing need to create a culture of creativity, innovation, and collaboration in my teaching space. In planning the Maker Space activities, I was very excited when I discovered LittleBits. LittleBits is an ever-growing opensource library of small electronic modules that easily connect together. Created by Ayah Bdeir, it started as a tool to help designers incorporate electronics into the prototyping process. Some educators have referred to these small components as the new legos for the iPad generation. What I like best is the simplicity of using the kits. There is no prerequisite knowledge to get started. Any student can begin exploring circuits with very little background in electronics. We started with
Instruction cards to help students get involved. To my surprise, very few students needed the cards. The engagement and excitement creating buzzers, fans, flashlights, and lego cars was a powerful learning event. The creative juices just kept flowing and it was difficult to get students to leave the space.
I have always felt an ongoing need to create a culture of creativity, innovation, and collaboration in my teaching space. In planning the Maker Space activities, I was very excited when I discovered LittleBits. LittleBits is an ever-growing opensource library of small electronic modules that easily connect together. Created by Ayah Bdeir, it started as a tool to help designers incorporate electronics into the prototyping process. Some educators have referred to these small components as the new legos for the iPad generation. What I like best is the simplicity of using the kits. There is no prerequisite knowledge to get started. Any student can begin exploring circuits with very little background in electronics. We started with
Instruction cards to help students get involved. To my surprise, very few students needed the cards. The engagement and excitement creating buzzers, fans, flashlights, and lego cars was a powerful learning event. The creative juices just kept flowing and it was difficult to get students to leave the space.
Robotics
Sphero is a robotic ball that a student can control with a tilt, touch, or even a swing of an iPad. There are many apps that can be used with Sphero. Draw a shape and Sphero will follow the path, drive it through a student created obstacle course or teach Sphero to dance. My favorite app is Tickle that allows students to use block coding to control Sphero. Ollie is another fast-moving robotic shape that is known for tricks and speed.
Sphero is a robotic ball that a student can control with a tilt, touch, or even a swing of an iPad. There are many apps that can be used with Sphero. Draw a shape and Sphero will follow the path, drive it through a student created obstacle course or teach Sphero to dance. My favorite app is Tickle that allows students to use block coding to control Sphero. Ollie is another fast-moving robotic shape that is known for tricks and speed.
OSMO
OSMO opens the iPad up to all kinds of possibilities. Using OSMO apps,
desk space becomes your educational, creative space. Students love drawing with the Masterpiece app or creating a challenging game with Newton app. OSMO offers a new way to experience spelling, vocabulary, tangrams, and logic games.
OSMO opens the iPad up to all kinds of possibilities. Using OSMO apps,
desk space becomes your educational, creative space. Students love drawing with the Masterpiece app or creating a challenging game with Newton app. OSMO offers a new way to experience spelling, vocabulary, tangrams, and logic games.
Scratch
Learning to code is a difficult task to undertake because it challenges students to think in a way that is quite different from their normal reasoning and problem solving. Scratch lets students write programs by dragging and connecting simple programming blocks.. The programming instruction blocks will only “fit” together in ways that make sense. The instruction pieces are color-coded according to what type of instruction they represent.
ScratchJr
ScratchJR was developed by Tufts University, with grants from the National Science Foundation, to allow young kids to easily learn programming with a system based on Scratch. The goal of ScratchJr is to "develop and study" the next generation of innovative technologies. Scratch JR's curricular materials help support integrated STEAM learning in early Education.
Learning to code is a difficult task to undertake because it challenges students to think in a way that is quite different from their normal reasoning and problem solving. Scratch lets students write programs by dragging and connecting simple programming blocks.. The programming instruction blocks will only “fit” together in ways that make sense. The instruction pieces are color-coded according to what type of instruction they represent.
ScratchJr
ScratchJR was developed by Tufts University, with grants from the National Science Foundation, to allow young kids to easily learn programming with a system based on Scratch. The goal of ScratchJr is to "develop and study" the next generation of innovative technologies. Scratch JR's curricular materials help support integrated STEAM learning in early Education.
Makey Makey
Makey Makey was designed by two graduate students at MIT Media Lab, MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. This kit uses a USB cord to connect its circuit board to a computer. The circuit board takes over certain keys on your keyboard or mouse. Using alligator clips, you can connect the space bar function of the MaKey MaKey controller to the end of a banana, pencil, or a piece of Play-Doh, and make that object the keyboard or mouse input. Just touch your “banana” and you control the functionality of the space bar on the computer. Let the fun begin!
Makey Makey was designed by two graduate students at MIT Media Lab, MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. This kit uses a USB cord to connect its circuit board to a computer. The circuit board takes over certain keys on your keyboard or mouse. Using alligator clips, you can connect the space bar function of the MaKey MaKey controller to the end of a banana, pencil, or a piece of Play-Doh, and make that object the keyboard or mouse input. Just touch your “banana” and you control the functionality of the space bar on the computer. Let the fun begin!