View this email in your browser

Forward

In this edition of the K-12 Maker Newsletter:

New Electronics Projects Webinars + Maker Tool Skills Workshops dates + academic topic and curriculum standard survey

FREE Webinars - Electronics Projects!

Demystify electronics with these creative projects that you can do with your students!

Create simple but clever circuits that add light, motion and even MP3 sound clips to your Maker projects.

Improve your understanding of electronics and physical computing through three creative projects: Magnetic Light-Up Tiles, MP3 player chips [with Arduino, Microbit,or a simple circuit], and Tilt-Buzz-Blink Gizmos.

We'll show examples of finished projects, go through the design and build process, and provide starter files. Kind of like a live Instructable.

Tilt-Buzz-Blink Gizmos
Monday October 24 4pm - 5:15pm
Combine creativity with simple electronic components to make fun gizmos that blink or buzz when you tilt them. No soldering required!

Magnetic Light-Up Tiles
Tuesday November 15 4pm - 5:15pm
Take a collective quilt-like project to the next level with expressive tiles with LEDs that turn on when they are magnetically attached to a board.

MP3 Player Boards (for Arduino, Micro:bit, and more)
Wednesday, December 7 4pm - 5:15pm
Add sounds to your microcontroller projects -even simple circuits - with the inexpensive DFPlayer Mini MP3 player board. We will cover examples using Arduino, micro:bit, and controlling the board with a switch.

Survey - Hard to Learn Topics?

What topics/concepts/standards do your students consistently struggle with?

Our team of MIT staff and students are ready to come up with ideas for Maker projects and even make prototypes. Send us your concepts/topics/standards, especially the ones that students find hard to grasp. We’ll run as many as we can through our design process and publish the topics and ideas on our website.

Help us design meaningful, relevant project ideas that teachers can use to motivate and engage their students in tough topics!

Take the Survey

It's Not Too Late to Register for Fall Tools Skills Workshops!

Build your skills with Maker tools - hands-on workshops at MIT, online and in-person

four images: teacher using glowforge laser cutter, teacher smiling while working on laptop with peers, instructor helping to troubleshoot a teacher's arduino wiring, a teacher holds up a light-up project in front of a whiteboard with electronics diagrams and notes

Learn to use popular Maker tools and materials to jumpstart Making in your classroom! Our Maker tools skills workshops are designed with the beginning Maker in mind, but all experience levels are welcome.

All workshops are held at our MIT Makerspace and simulcast for remote participants.

Workshops run from ours are 8:30 - 2:30 EDT

Full kits of materials are shipped to remote participants as needed

Spend a day with us and leave with starter projects, resources, and the confidence to carry out projects in your classroom!

See the Fall Schedule

See what participants said about our workshops this summer:

“Hands on - plenty of help - guidance on issues we will face while trying to teach this to students - very helpful. It's one thing to learn how to use the hardware/software - it's a whole different ballgame trying to figure out how to teach the information to kids”
“Justin was excellent about addressing what the students might say in hypothetical teaching situations. Diane outlined the variety of ways we could customize and "hack" projects!”
“Great overview, excellent ideas on 3-D printing, we had time to innovate and try our own designs.”
“Having time to tinker and figure it out on our own, having instructions / ideas for projects”
“The materials were clear and plentiful. The assistants were very helpful.”

The mission of the K-12 Maker team is to help K-12 classroom educators create and deliver fun, enriching Maker experiences to their students - no matter what subject they teach. Building upon our experiences as K-12 teachers, we work directly with other educators to collect and co-design resources. Our team is part of the MIT Edgerton Center, a home for experiential learning at MIT for decades, The Edgerton Center offers classes and resources in engineering and imaging, and supports student engineering clubs and teams, in addition to offering a year-round K-12 program. We design, create, and teach at the MIT Edgerton Center Student Project Lab, a working Makerspace filled with MIT students, staff, and community as well as a wide variety of prototyping/Maker tools and materials.