by IEEE Grants

Link to Video --- We received the Makey Makey’s a few days before the Kelton Astronomy Night. The Forth Graders used the Makey Makey to enhance the displays that they already had built. They made their astronomy displays interactive by making them speak or sing when someone would push on a button or open a flap (kind of like a fancy Hallmark card). The forth graders did this by pre-recording their explanations, then they wrote a program in Scratch where if a certain key on the keyboard was pushed then that sound file would play.  Some students also added programming that if another sound file was already playing it would stop it and only play the current file.  With the Makey Makey plugged into to the computer, the computer just thinks its another keyboard. The student wired their buttons or flaps and assigned a keyboard keys to them. The end results were amazing. As an educator it was so exciting to see the student explain their display and then explain how they wired it and programmed it all in the same presentation.

At Kelton Astronomy Night, the seventh grade girls created fake latex juicy alien eye balls and brain, then made an music instrument out of them.  Using the Makey Makey, they wired the alien body parts then programmed the parts to make alien musical sounds.  It was a hit. 

Using a circuit pencil and a Makey Makey, one of our seventh grade boys created two specialized game controllers for his favorite games. To get his game control to be compatible with Nights at Freddies, he had to delve into the coding and rework the code, specifically on the what the different keys and mouse controls do. At Astronomy Night, this same student show the public how to create and use a circuit pencil to create a controller for Mindcraft.