As part of Coffeechug Cafe Hackshop series I gave an arduino kit to a student to play with over Spring Break. I simply asked him to play and tinker around. Adam is a great kid who does have a bit of coding knowledge that he self taught himself.
Over break he sent me two videos. I just had to share because he is an example of simply giving someone time and tools to play and tinker.
I gave him free reign to play and tinker. His first project was just learn Arduino. He had never used it before and it was all brand new to him. He sent his first video of just getting the LED light to work which he did a great job doing.
A few days later he sent me another video to learn more programming. He created a Morse Code Converter program all on his own.
How awesome is that? We have plans to meet a few days a week to work on some projects together and see what we can come up with. I have much to learn from him and he is just another example about what can happen when you give kids time and a place to play and tinker. Something that we need to figure out how to bring into the school day more.
We have two more kits and I will be working with students after school a few times a week to figure out ways to use Arduino in our school. One idea I have is to incorporate Arduino programming into our LEGO World Build Challenge that I have going on in my school. You can read some prior posts on this to gain a sense of what we are doing. I want LED lights, stoplights, and inter-activeness to the city once we get it built and established.
More importantly, I want to figure out more ways to get this type of free play built into schools to help students find their flow and new ways of thinking learning.
What will Adam come up with next? I cannot wait to find out.
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