For educators, especially those who may be new to technology and STEM in general, the Makey Makey is an excellent starting point. Besides immediately recognizing its catchy name, the Makey Makey is an extremely appealing teaching tool that boosts student engagement and maximizes in-class instruction. What does it teach? Just about anything you want, but the Makey Makey is designed to help kids grasp the principles of conductivity and circuitry by making functional touchpads out of everyday objects. Sound good? Keep reading to learn more!
The Makey Makey Helps Makers Join the Maker Movement
If you are a Web-surfing teacher, which we highly recommend due to the infinite library of resources floating around the Internet, you have probably seen pictures or at least heard the phrase Makey Makey mentioned by other educators. You may have seen it with bananas or various other fruits and thought to yourself, ‘what is that’? Now you’re finally ready to investigate and learn about what makes the Makey Makey so prolific. It’s not just that it can be connected to a bunch of different bananas to create a musical fruit spread. The Makey Makey is a powerful tool for teaching elementary students STEM concepts through interactive activities and collaborative projects.
It takes only a few minutes of tinkering for it to become crystal clear that the Makey Makey is a dynamic way to shake up education and encourage maker-focused learning. It’s extremely unique as it lets kids construct innovative projects that they can control using their own conductivity! The Makey Makey interface is a tiny computer and when kids connect jumper cables to its ports, including the one labeled ‘Ground,’ they can control computer functions using the electricity that’s present inside them! Due to its versatility and propensity for interactivity, the Makey Makey is a great way to introduce kids to the Maker Movement, which is all about using common materials to build, tinker with and customize creative projects that serve a legitimate purpose in the world. Kids can accomplish anything that they would normally be able to do with a directional key and a mouse, including playing computer games, but the Makey Makey also allows them to go a step further and actually build usable controllers!
The Makey Makey fits right in to makerspaces as well as classrooms, giving students the option to create authentic projects with a great deal of flexibility. The board processes different types of inputs, allowing students to add interactivity to their makerspace projects. The amount of project possibilities is almost immeasurable, but the Makey Makey is so engaging that it can keep the attention of students in ways that traditional learning cannot always accomplish. Like the Maker Movement, the Makey Makey helps promote adaptability, creativity and versatility from an early age. Kids can build tools to use for practical purposes and then easily transform their projects into a fun-focused game as a reward for constructing something so ingenious. The Makey Makey is an awesome tool to get kids started on the path to not only becoming certified makers, but certified change makers as well!
How to use the Makey Makey in Math Class
The Makey Makey is commonly seen as a STEM tool that improves education as a whole rather than focusing on one specific subject. This notion is perfectly fine, but, when broken down, the Makey Makey is actually very useful at helping to enhance more than one specific subject throughout the school day. One you might not think of, but is certainly able to be brought to life by the Makey Makey is actually math class. We touched on the high levels of versatility that the Makey Makey has earlier in the post and its place in math classrooms further solidifies that claim. It’s what students can do with the Makey Makey in math classes, however, that makes it truly great. Using the Makey Makey and a few other simple tools, kids can actually engage in basic coding projects and games without the need for any high-tech or complex set-up.
Students can use the Makey Makey to try some basic forms of programming, which they can use in various activities in their classes, including math in particular. When coding, students are able to learn across math standards instead of in isolation, giving them the valuable opportunity to fail safely and productively. These projects also allow students to take risks and solve problems while they build computational thinking skills through hands-on learning rather than with a textbook. Making enables children to get creative with how they learn, which makes learning fun rather than repetitive and concrete. The Makey Makey can help kids learn a variety of STEM concepts, including those related to math, like probability, sequencing and even factoring, giving students the opportunity to add physical interaction to their education on a much more regular basis.
When it comes to teaching probability, one of our favorite activities at Eduporium is the Web-based coin flipper program. It’s really basic, but incorporates elements of coding and hands-on learning at the same time. This particular project—though there are hundreds of variations or completely different activities you could try—enables kids to explore the fundamental concepts of measurement, algebra and geometry in order to code their probability simulators. To carry out the project, students will need to manipulate the X and Y values—a time-tested staple of mathematical education—only they’re doing it with a computer program. In essence, students are using the Makey Makey to control the coin flipper program and trying some coding to customize their program as well—just one of the many ways that this EdTech tool fits into a variety of elementary and middle school subjects.
Lesson Plan Ideas for the Makey Makey
The beautiful thing about using the Makey Makey in education is that it’s suitable in all grade levels, offering children the chance to engage in an immense variety of customizable projects. Teachers can use the Makey Makey to create quick in-class activities to supplement their lessons or even construct an entire lesson plan that focuses on using the Makey Makey to illustrate concepts like electricity, conductivity and circuitry. If they're not particularly creative (we know, it’s tough), there are hundreds of innovative lesson plan ideas available online for teachers to try with their students! A lot of the lessons do require some extra pieces in order to optimize the project, but, to start, you’ll always need a computer—ideally a laptop to connect the Makey Makey. Once you’ve got that, the possibilities are pretty much infinite.
Not only is the Makey Makey appropriate for almost any grade level and subject, it’s exceptional at illustrating specific topics and concepts, too. Basic projects include testing different objects for their conductivity—something that could result in younger students tearing the classroom apart in search of unique items to test! Students have been known to test things like pens and pencils, clothing items, foods, water, books and other school supplies to see if they can be used to complete their circuits. Another fun thing to try is to not only test a pencil, but to test the lead specifically. Students can do this by drawing a sketch on a piece of paper and connecting the alligator clips right onto the graphite. The answer to whether or not the pencil’s graphite is conductive might surprise them! To get extra creative, try replacing the fruits on your Makey Makey piano with small cups of water—it should work, but challenge students to investigate why they think that water is conductive.
Students can also build logic puzzles for use in English class, interactive word problems to help them get better at math or totally legitimate game controllers to help them get familiar with the principles of coding. These projects can be worked on by groups of 2-4 students or even individually right in the classroom. Each group could even potentially try a different project so that there’s no chance for repetitiveness—just hands-on, DIY learning. Our favorite project, however, is one that’s intended for sixth-eighth graders and focuses on acceleration and physics. Using the Makey Makey and Scratch, kids are able to measure acceleration and how it changes using a virtual program. By the time they're done, students should be able to define distance, measure velocity, calculate speed and grasp the concepts of energy. It’s extremely engaging and tons of fun at the same time.
Makey Makey is Perfect for Makerspaces
There may be nothing trendier in education right now than makerspaces. With such a large focus on hands-on, experiential and technology-enabled learning, makerspaces give kids the chance to tinker with technology, fail freely and get their hands dirty in a safe space that encourages learning. Kids learn best when the technology they have keeps them on their toes. Speaking of staying on your toes, since technology is always changing and being updated, it’s important for teachers to keep tabs on what’s new and, more importantly, what’s useful. Fortunately, the Makey Makey has been a stronghold in maker education for a few years now as it consistently is able to deliver a meaningful beginner-level learning experience for children, especially in makerspaces.
As its name may suggest, the Makey Makey is often one of the first tools that tech-savvy teachers think of when they decide it’s time to build a makerspace. It fulfills a few key criteria that makerspace tools should possess, including ease of use, a technology component and the ability for kids to make something meaningful or functional. The idea of makerspaces is not always to simply get kids building, though. Especially as they get older, children should focus more on learning how to make things that they can use or that others can use to solve a problem or enact a change within the community. No other EdTech tool will give kids the chance to learn programming in such a unique way. They probably won't realize it, but by controlling various objects with the Makey Makey, they actually really are programming at a very basic level.
Aside from its functional possibilities, the Makey Makey offers other advantages for maker educators, especially those who are constrained by tiny budgets. At just $49.95, the Makey Makey offers an affordable option for teachers who need to cut costs whenever possible but who also want to still deliver an exceptional learning experience. The Makey Makey is also expandable as it includes enough jumper wires to connect to every port on the board and then some, making it an inclusive product for collaborative projects. What we mean by ‘expandable’ is that it’s a pretty small piece of technology, but students can create interactive materials of almost any size when using it. Makey Makey is also 100 percent reusable, which is important for those teachers who do not have the time or money for learning with one-and-done products. Most importantly for the sake of students is that the Makey Makey brilliantly encourages creative thinking, designing and making, giving kids the opportunity to develop important skills while they try brand new types of fun and meaningful learning.
Just Some of the Things You Can Hack with the Makey Makey
You’ve learned so far that the Makey Makey is a creativity-boosting tool that turns ordinary objects into interactive touchpads. You’ve also learned that the secret to its magic is based on conductivity and electricity. Any object (people included) that can pass electricity through their interior is conductive and, therefore, can be used to complete Makey Makey-inspired circuits. Of course, there are some classic examples that teachers and makers always lean on when showing the awesomeness of the Makey Makey (like bananas), but there are so many objects, foods, liquids and even fabrics that allow electricity to pass through them as well—and you’ll definitely be surprised by some of them!
Since it burst onto the EdTech scene in 2012, makers and inventors have been finding increasingly innovative ways to make magic out of nothing using the Makey Makey. The tool’s creator prides himself on showing that his inventive product works with pizza, which, yes, is apparently conductive. The most popular project is using the Web program, Scratch, connecting the Makey Makey to a computer and using a huge variety of objects as tangible piano keys. Another cool idea is to replace the bananas with bobblehead dolls. They should all be conductive and it’s a pretty funny way to put the Makey Makey to use. Even sandwiches (and most of the contents) are conductive, so if you don’t feel like finishing your lunch, you can turn it into a productive learning experience!
The creative uses of the Makey Makey keep getting better and better, but we’re fairly confident that we’ll continue to see new ones on a regular basis. Got a dog? His fur should get the job done. You can even draw your touchpads using pencil since the graphite is conductive or paint a circuit with electrically conductive Electric Paint. In this case, you can attach the alligator clips to the painted part of the paper and press the other end of your painted line to make it work. Finally, an old-time favorite, Play-Doh, is a great conductor of electricity. You can probably guess that this enables students and makers to get incredibly creative since they can twist and sculpt the Play-Doh to shape it however they want, which is pretty awesome! And, just in case you were wondering, some of the other objects that are conductive include paint brushes, a drill, silverware, alphabet soup, paintings, guitars and necklaces—bringing amazingness to everyday learning and hacking!
For the latest EdTech, STEM, and 21st century education news, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Like us on Facebook, too, or sign up for our newsletter for our latest product announcements and offerings. If you have an idea for the next Eduporium Weekly theme, send us a message on any of our social media accounts or comment below.