User Generated Education

I am quite fond of facilitating physical computing activities with my learners as I’ve discussed in Scratch and Makey Makey Across the Curriculum . For that post I created the following graphic to represent the benefits of physical computing. I think it is important to extend the use of coding and microcontrollers into creating physical objects for the following reasons:

Standards Addressed

ISTE Standards for Students

• Know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
• Develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.
• Exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
• Create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.

Next Generation Science Standards

• Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
• Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.

micro:bit Activities

The following slide deck contains the list of micro:bit activities completed by my summer campers. It includes the Makecode for the more advanced projects:

Here are examples of student projects: