For educators, especially those who may be new to technology and STEM in general, the Makey Makey is an excellent starting point for your lessons. Besides immediately recognizing its catchy name, the Makey Makey is an extremely appealing teaching tool that boosts engagement and maximizes instruction. What does it help you teach? Just about anything you want.
Connecting STEAM to this real-world Halloween fun helps students to stay engaged and build some key skills. In these projects, they’ll explore design thinking, engineering, coding, and more by programming an Ozobot Evo to trick-or-treat, make a haunted diorama with the Glowforge 3D laser printer, customize a costume with the MakeDo tools, or doodle a life-sized 3D bat.
The Makey Makey kit from JoyLabz has long been among the most widely used and respected STEAM tools for K–12 education. What exactly does it do, though? Technically, the Makey Makey acts like keyboards or a mouse, sending signals to a computer to execute functions like clicking a mouse’s buttons or the space bar, right arrow, left arrow, up arrow, or down arrow.
Though it’s been around for a while, Scratch remains an extremely reliable coding platform that teachers can use to introduce elementary students to programming and meet them where they are. It’s a super strong beginner-level language with a lot of functionality and was created around graphical coding to serve as a great introductory classroom option for K–8 students.
For this last educator, however, we sent a little something before the start of the new year. Leigh Kuhn is a school librarian at Bondurant Middle School in Frankfort, Ky. and she caught our eye with her ‘STEM to STREAM’ initiative, so we made sure to get her something she can use in the new year!
Back in June, we announced a new educational technology grant program to award $500 of STEM tools to one deserving recipient every month. Our selection committee met this week and awarded the first grant to Melinda Pastuszak, a teacher with the Chamberlayne Elementary School (Virginia). Mindy is in the process of planning the launch of a new STEAM program!
As we know, STEM has evolved to STEAM, adding art to the mix (as well as some other variations). Technology can be a great way for students to enhance their art classes using tools like conductive paint, virtual reality, or more. It can also be used in music classes, though, creating interactive, exciting, and real world experiences.
Here’s your chance to do just that. We’re having a FLASH SALE with huge PRICE REDUCTIONS on some of our absolute BEST STEM learning tools. With unbelievable prices on innovative products for robotics, 3D printing, design, and coding, can you (or your students) really afford to miss out? The Dash and Dot kits, Ozobot kits, and more are part of this offer.
Our culture empowers everyone to think outside the box, engineer, innovate, and grow. ‘Why be tied down to one place when I could be inventing in my own backyard?’ Joy Labz, creators of one of the original and most popular maker tools (the Makey Makey), has come up with an ingenious solution to this very problem: The Makey Makey GO!
We’re guessing you’re already familiar with both littleBits and the Makey Makey, but, if you’re not, you can learn a bit about them by exploring our blog and store. Basically, littleBits are electronic building blocks that each have their own specific function and allow kids to build inventions with purpose. Read on to learn more about it.
