Makey Makey-ing Interactive Displays

For the final STEM Lab rotation I wanted 3rd and 4th grade to employ all of the skills they developed this year. They constructed cardboard arcades and costumes for robotic story retells. They created a variety of Scratch projects, some to share content area knowledge, some just for fun. So I planned a unit that would require both their physical and digital making acumen. Enter the Makey Makey.

The Makey Makey is an input/output board that allows students to create circuits that act as keyboard presses. Using the programming language Scratch, students are able to create projects with an interactive dimension. The end product of this unit is an interactive poster or display that responds to the user's touch to activate the different parts of the program.

Students were organized into pairs and then used the project selector to be assigned a topic. This was the first introduction to Makey Makey for most of them. The project selector is a Scratch program I created with several lists of topics. Students pressed one of 4 foil switches left over from our STEM night, and the project told them their topic. (Third grade received a science concept, 4th was assigned an influential woman from history.) This was followed by a day of research. Student teams recorded their information in journals and then planned their Scratch projects. They grouped their facts plotting what images or animations would be on screen at the time. The teams also had to plan their physical display pieces. I showed the classes a few half done versions of the projects to give them a starting point. Most groups ended up far exceeding  my ideas in terms of creativity and skill.

With their research and planning finished, the teams began creating their Scratch projects and displays. Students learned how to insert photographs and other graphics from their research into the program. They also learned about proper citations of sources and images. The Scratch presentation required students to build scripts around key press events. For example, when the space key is pressed the background changes or an animation begins and a sprite tells a piece of information about the topic. Other key press events cause different things to happen in the program. The displays could be anything from posters to paper sculptures. There was a wonderful variety of display pieces; posters like protest signs, a 3D submarine, a model of the UNIVAC, and a diorama of the jungle.

Once both parts, digital and physical were complete, the groups used copper foil tape with a conductive adhesive to "wire" their projects. Metal fasteners were used as buttons on the outward side of the display with the wires on the reverse. The Makey Makey uses alligator clip wires to connect the contacts on the device to the copper foil wires. Each contact is designated as a particular key, space, the arrow keys and 6 letters. The user touches a ground point on the display with one hand and one of the buttons with the other, thus closing a circuit. Makey Makey signals the computer that a key was pressed. The act of wiring and testing that touching the display caused the correct response in their program was an excellent exercise in basic circuits and debugging.

As always, I have been deeply impressed with the work the students produced. Now that they are familiar with using Makey Makey I cannot wait to see what they do with it next year!