Makey Makey in the Library
The Makey Makey is a hands on coding and circuitry activity that can be used with kids of any age to explore electricity and circuits. The Makey Makey kit comes in a small tin and contains a circuit board and wires. The circuit board connects (via micro usb) to a computer. From here, the board is active and you can play with the Makey Makey using only the circuit board and your fingers. However, if you want your students to really explore electricity and conductivity, you will want to use the included wires. These wires connect to the circuit board via alligator clips. Then you connect the other side of the wires to something you think will conduct electricity. If it does, then when you touch that object, the Makey Makey will work! Here is a video showing an example of how the Makey Makey can be used to play the piano:
While this is a simple video that shows you how the Makey Makey is set up and used, it opens the doors to a wide variety of possibilities within the classroom (especially if you are doing a unit on electricity). For example, if you wanted to have students study how electricity moves through a closed circuit and not an open circuit, you could give them the pieces and have them work as a group to set up a closed circuit. This would fall under collaborative adaptation in the technology integration matrix. Then, students could continue to explore which items are conductors of electricity by trying different objects and seeing which objects complete the circuits. This would still be under the collaborative heading of the technology integration matrix but moving more towards fusion.
You could also have students working in the active strand of the technology integration matrix by having them use some of the Makey Makey apps. These apps allow students to use what they have learned about conductors to complete circuits and use them to play games. This would allow for active adaptation and active infusion (depending on how often students get to use the Makey Makey).
I really love how hands-on the Makey Makey is and how easy it is for students to use to explore. Once you have given a quick explanation of how it works, students can really be allowed to explore on their own. They build on their knowledge of electricity and can also find out some surprising facts (like the fact that pencil lead is a conductor!). There are also extension packs that can be used for learning coding along with electricity. Students can also explore coding through some of the Scratch apps that they have added. The Makey Makey is perfect for any maker space in the library. Here are some websites you can use:
References
Florida Center for Instructional Technology (2023). The technology integration matrix. TiM. https://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix/.
Makey Makey. (2021, April 14). A simple Makey Makey banana piano [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1mYalegtdI.
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