Michael Kolody’s Makey-Makey Mania
Michael Kolody’s ImagineIT project is really MAKING a powerful impact on learning. He and his students have turned a few Makey-Makey kits into some very clever classroom projects. Creativity is booming! Kolody received 15 Makey-Makey kits thanks to a Donors Choose grant. The first few activities allowed the students to play music using an online piano written in Scratch. They used multi-colored balls of Play-Doh as controllers. After experimenting a bit, the students wanted to create their own version of Dance, Dance Revolution. The students made cardboard arrows for foot controls, wrapped them with aluminum foil and wired them to the controller on the Makey Makey kit. And…it worked! The students continue to make improvements to their Dance, Dance Revolution game design.
“We are in version 2.0, we now have a game that is not just playable — it is fun to play with downloadable songs and the ability to record your own dance patterns,” Kolody shared.