Diverse classrooms: digital fabrication for all

For this week's asignment we were asked to design an eeducational activity using simple electornics components. For this purpose I created a circuit based on the idea of an LED dimmer. This is basically a potentiometer connected to an LED as a way to control the amount of current delivered to it. By varying the current, the potentiometer lets us control the brightness of the LED.

To replicate this circuit all you need is an LED, a 100 Ohm resistor, a 10 kOhm potentiometer, a breadboard, some wires and a 2 AA battery holder. A picture showing how everything is connected is shown in the picture slider below.

By repeating this simple pattern and changing the color of the LEDs to be red, green and blue, we have a circuit that shows how it is possible to combine those three colors to create any other color imaginable - even white!


Below you can see the result you get when using this circuit to combine the lights of the different LEDs.


This kind of activity is not totally strange for my workplace. Even though we usually work with micro contorller boards and modules made for rapid prototyping, as opposed to single components, our students have access to this kind of elements in case they need them. And most of the time the projects they develop are rpoposed byt them, and this gives them both the motivation to overcome the difficulties that will appear and the opportunity to use technology as a way express their own views and opinions about the world, society and how to face the world they live in.

Soon you'll find information about this week's assignment.