For this week's asignment we were asked to use some development board to sense something in our classes (noise / light / movement) and produce some kind of response (audio, light, movement).

The proyect I'm presenting is one I built and used some time ago. It is built around the micro:bit board and its goal is to get the students' attention and curiosity and get them trying to "guess" the working of the system without knowing how it is built. From there we can begin discussing about sensors, what they know about them, how they work, what types of sensors exist, and how can the information from one board be transmitted to another one.

The project uses 2 micro:bit boards. One (the transmitter) is programmed to send a radio message when shaken (detected by the onboard accelerometer). The other board (the receptor) is programmed to play back some sounds and shine its LEDs when receiving a message. For this it uses its onboard buzzer and LED matrix. For communications between the boards a radio module is used - this module is also part of the micro:bit board.

The transmitter board is hidden inside a glove, and when I present the system to the students I do it as some kind of magic act. I ask one of the to hold the receiver board, and quickly point (shake) my emitter hand at the receiver board. What happens then is that the receiver comes alive and makes sound and animations, as if by magic! After doing it a couple of times with different volunteers I reveal the parts of the system inside the glove, and have them try it many times, trying to find different ways of triggering the effect, or even trying to move the glove without triggering it, in order to find the limits of the system.

You can see the project in action on the following video

If you want to replicate this project you can use the following links to get the code for both the transmitter and the receiver.

• Transmitter code
• Receiver code

On makerspaces and interdisciplinary work

During the past couple of years we've been trying to consolidate a more interdisciplinary oriented way of working at my school. And for this, our STEAM lab has been a great aid. This place, a small makerspace, has given the students the tools but more importantly the space to investigate, design, build and test all kinds of creations. It has also made possible for other teachers to think differently about project based work and what students can do when left to exercise their imagination and autonomy.

Right now this space is undergoing a renovation - it will have new furniture, more storage space and it will be powered by a grid of solar panels! Here are some renders of how it should look like when finished. Here you will also find a few images of a private Makerspace I've been setting up. The idea is to have this space available to everyone with some project or idea who needs the tools, space or knowledge to complete his or her vision.

The task for the the second week is to program a microcontroller board, connect it to another device and communicate data generated or sensed.

For this task I decided to use micro:bit boards. The plan is to have one micro:bit placed outdoors sensing the UV index at different times of day and send that data to some cloud service. A second micro:bit will be placed somewhere else and programmed to periodically read the data made available by the first board. The idea of this setup is to have a system that alerts of UV levels outside of the classroom (or any other place at school) so students and teachers can take the necessary precuations before going outside, or even decide not to go outside if UV levels are too high. In addition, both boards will alert of the different levels using lights and sounds, in case somebody can't read the attached displays.

The components used in this project are:

• 2 microbit boards
• 2 Reka:bit expansion boards for micro:bit
• 2 16x2 I2C LCD displays with Grove connectors
• 2 WiFi modules for micro:bit with Grove connectors
• 1 UV sensor with Grove connectors
• 2 4xAAA battery packs, or nay other suitable power source
• USB-micro USB cable for programming the micro:bit boards
• A user account at Blynk, the cloud service used as interface for connecting both boards.

The programming platform used for this project is Makecode. All programming was done using the blocks interface. After connecting to the Internet using the WiFi module, the UV sensing board gets, every five seconds, the UV level read by the sensor, does some calculations and transforms that reading into a standard UV index. It then stores the value in a local variable, shows the value on the LCD screen and also sends it to Blynk (the cloud service). In parallel, another part of the code reads the last produced value and turns the onboard RGB LEDs to different colors and makes some noises depending on how high the UV index is.

The "indoors" part of the system connects to the Internet every 5 seconds retrieves the last value received by Blynk. It then shows the value on the LCD screen and turns the onboard RGB lights to a color related to the level received.

Here are the links to the code I used for this project:

• Code for the outdoor module
• Code for the indoor module

If you want to use it, remember that you need to setup an account on the Blynk site. After setting up a new project there, retrieve the token and copy it on the appropriate place on the code for both the indoor and outdoor modules. You'll also need to setup WiFi access for both parts of the system - just add your WiFi SSID and password in the code.

Reflection questions

Regarding collaboration in my local community, I have a very good relationship with some schools and universities and we are working together on some projects related to technology, digital fabrication and STEAM education. I hope that the implementation of my own makerspace will allow me to offer a space to further develop projects on those topics and have them open to the general public, be it children, young people, students or teachers that want to learn and get a hands on experience.

In my school we already have a makerspace, and although it is small, it has already captured the imagination of the students. What comes next is get other teachers to learn about the possibilities that arise when integrating some of the technologies that we have into their classes in an interdisciplinary way when develpoing projects. For the past few years I've already been integrating physical computing and IoT in my teaching and I'm sure that it can be a really powerful tool if students begin to apply those techniques and technologies in projects for other areas, or even better, in projects that include teachers from many different areas.

The Field Activity for module 4 was to to create a lesson plan involving robotics, physical computing or programming and test it in real educational environment. The lesson plan should include certain aspect of interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity.

You can review the lesson plan I created for this Field Activity using this link.

Below you will find a small video showing some of the finished models built by my students as part of the activity.