Weekly update (6 Jul 2015)
Last week we had the kids from the NCIE School Holiday Program in the Hub to transform all manner of household objects into controllers for MIT Scratch games. The technology to make it happen is call Makey Makey, and is billed as an “inspiration kit”. If the kids’ response to the activity was anything to go by, it’s an apt title :)
We’re looking forward to sharing that experience with even more kids at the NCIE’s NAIDOC day celebration on Friday. We’re holding two sessions on the day—one on MIT Scratch (10:30am), the other using the Makey Makey’s (1:30pm).
The muru-D workshop grants application closed on Friday—we’re looking forward to working through the applications and seeing 5 people from outside the wider Sydney area attend the muru-D workshop on 25–26 July, now being held here at the IDX Hub. While the travel grants have now closed, there’s still a few spaces left in the workshop.
As we start to think about how the activities we’ve been running—like Scratch, robotics and 3D printing—might start to be applied by others, we’ve been thinking about the cost of robotics kits and other devices that we’ve been employing. The LEGO kits are a fantastic tool with a lot of scope for supporting participants across a range of learning levels. They also have strong support by educators around the world, for example being integrated into programs such as FIRST Robotics.
However, they are also somewhat expensive, especially when you are considering purchasing multiple kits to support a class. At the State Library Queensland’s Digital Literacy forum we heard of some libraries that have purchased kits, however, we still foresee this being a barrier to the employment of this engaging tool in STEM and digital learning more broadly.
With that in mind we’re taking some initial exploratory steps to understand what alternatives might be suitable. As part of this, Michael has been looking into interfaces between MIT Scratch and LEGO robots. Our thinking is if this interface is fruitful, it may enable the use of MIT Scratch as an interface to other robotics kits, such as those built on the open-source Arduino platform, or systems like Raspberry Pi or Particle.
Our thinking is that if we can move towards such platforms, esp. the open-source Arduino (or similar), that we can suggest a variety of lower-cost options that still achieve our core goals of developing coding and device skills.
If you’ve had experience with any of these alternate platforms, we’d love to hear from you.
