Category Archives: education

Squishy Circuits

I shall call him SQUISHY and he shall be mine and he shall be my SQUISHY – Dory, Finding Nemo This is a wonderful idea for teaching electrical circuits and more (thanks to Linda Sandvik for tweeting about something that … Continue reading

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A combined WW2 history, binary maths, computing, code-breaking lesson

I used the 70th anniversary of D-Day as a starting point for an investigation into binary arithmetic, code breaking, computer error correction, and computer programming. I began by showing children pictures of soldiers about to land in Normandy, a German … Continue reading

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Visual MaKey MaKey Scratch piano

I liked the simple piano I used for the Potato Piano, but I wanted something with some visual feedback, so I just made this one. It works just the same, you wire up some vegetables, PlayDoh, stairs, children etc to … Continue reading

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Potato Piano

Inspired by Whack-a-Potato, I decided to make a Potato Piano, using a MaKey MaKey, a laptop and 8 potatoes. This is a pretty simple project: just go to http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/3197340/ and click on the green flag. You don’t even need to … Continue reading

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Scratch-a-Sketch

I love simple paint programs, like my 2005 effort TillyPaint. Scratch is a great environment for coding such things, and I decided to combine a go at writing a new one with Makey Makey pencil-on-paper buttons to make a kind … Continue reading

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