Module 3 Field Activity: Electronics & Programming: Collaboration and Assessment¶
A Makey Makey Integration for a Transdisciplinary Science Research Project¶
For this field activity, I integrated an electronic component into a longstanding transdisciplinary mammal research project. I had initially had the idea to add interactive posters to the 8-9s Mammal Study at FabPlay 2025. At the conference, I made a diagram of a mammal labeled in Spanish and wired it using Makey Makey.
Makey Makey Mammal Diagram Test at FABPlay2025
I recorded audio of each body part in scratch and coded the differet buttons of poster. While testing this out at the Franklin Lab, Jaymes helped me to build it into a more meaningful, exit quiz project.
The Quiz:¶
These quizzes will be displayed during the student expo alongside mammal research posters, needle-felted mammals from art class, pourquoi stories from writing class, and Spanish puppet shows sharing language about their mammals’ descriptive features.
Last Year’s Mammal Study Expo
The tech integration into the mammal study serves as both an interactive display and an assessment in support of learning goals for the subjects Spanish and Writing. It also provides a collaborative learning opportunity during a project where students have been working independently in all four classes to research and create their respective projects.
To stay on track, the team of teachers keeps this spreadsheet up-to-date with the progress of their class’s project. In the week preceding the expo, teachers push into each other’s classes and help students to complete all of their open items. We mostly communicate through a group email to coordinate classes and plans for the curriculum share.
This is an example of a Spanish quiz draft:
For Spanish, this activity served as an assessment of sentence structure, focusing on both declarative statements and the formation of questions.
In my scopes lesson plan I expanded the quizzes to support all four subjects: art, science, Spanish, and Writing.
## Implementation:
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances at my school, the Spanish teacher was unable to get the videos completed on time. We decided to pivot to collaboratively illustrated, interactive posters for Spanish class only. Students had already written scripts for their puppet shows, and Chris, the Spanish teacher, wanted a project that would support them in practicing speaking their lines.
This turned out to be a great opportunity to assess another teacher’s curricular needs and to help design a tech integration to support those needs.
In this new iteration, 3-4 students contributed to a New York state scene with a drawing of their mammal and the surrounding habitat. Students recorded audio into Scratch - one full script per sound clip. Next we added brass brads as buttons, ran wire down the back of the poster to reach the alligator clips, and coded each recording to a different button on the poster.
Students’ scripts included descriptive text about their mamifero. Since their script needed to be included in one take they had plenty of practice as the rerecord as needed. The Spanish teacher sat and conferenced with them as they recorded. This offered a soft assessment of the language skills and gave him the opportunity to provide one-on-one support. I managed the rest of the class as they finished different tasks within all mammal related projects so that he could focus his attention on individual student Spanish support.
If I had time, my goal was to get at least one of the exit quizzes completed for the expo. Unfortunately, this did not happen.
Mammal Expo:¶
Each Makey Makey Board was connected to two spanish posters. The groups’ science posters, felted animals and pourquois stories were included in each section.
Students enjoyed sharing their posters with their parents.
Lesson Feedback from AI:¶
Due to this curricular pivot, I chose to get feedback from AI on my scopes lesson plan.
Here is the link to the conversation
At first, I didn’t know what to say, so I opened with a broad ask for feedback after giving a context for my lesson.
The first set of strengths and areas for improvement made a lot of sense. I used some of the advice and included the length of the tech integration lessons alongside the opening work of the research project. It made an interesting point about group composition and then offered to create a checklist. I took it up on the offer of a checklist and included that in my Scopes lesson.
I also liked the suggestion and will add that as a suggestion in my teacher notes section.
As the conversation progressed, the idea of creating a poster arose. This inspired me to request a visual aid for connecting the Makey Makey to the poster. The first poster was a little confusing - images were mixed up with instructions and wires were connected incorrectly. I inputted a second request with more detail and it was able to produce a poster with an image of my prototype! I included this as an attachment, too.
It still needs a little tweaking to look exactly as I would ask students to set it up, but it’s a great start, and I’ll continue using AI for projects like this.
When you design a learning activity how do you take into account diversity? Could you describe one learning situation in which you did not take into account diversity in planning? How did you solved the situation?
When designing activities for my lessons, I account for the age group and the specific students’ learning styles. Our class populations range from kinesthetic to auditory learners. I work to use a UDL approach to my activities to ensure that all learners are receiving information in a form that is accessible.
Early in the year, I planned an activity that required a significant amount of writing. One student began to fall behind and was disengaging from the lesson - it was too much writing too quickly. I hadn’t noticed before this class that he had difficulty keeping up with note-taking and hadn’t made a different plan for him.
During the activity, I began to assist him in writing by adding headers and other elements that helped move him to areas where he was only recording his thoughts, rather than spending energy copying from the board.
In future lessons that required significant writing, I scaffolded the activity so that the minimum writing load met the needs of that student. I incorporated extra writing opportunities to keep students who wrote more quickly engaged.
What aspects would you need to take into consideration if you have kids with a) learning disabilities, b) physical disabilities, c)emotional disabilities when preparing your DF activities.
The most important part of planning lessons for a diverse group of learners is to keep the steps small and introduce them individually. This may result in some students finishing early, but they can easily become helpers. Sometimes I will have an activity for students I know will finish ahead of the group to work on while the rest of the class catches up. I also find it helpful to engage students in sensory-rich explorations to engage learners who need more tactile input than others. For example, in this circuit lesson, I introduced circuits using Energy Sticks. This scaffolded a low-pressure, gross motor activity before diving into a more challenging, fine motor activity.
How do you usually assess learning activities which involve digital fabrication? Which is your favourite method? What aspects do you think you can change in your assessment practices?
Prior to this course, I had not incorporated digital fabrication technology into my teaching practice. However, some of the assessment strategies I already use in science and woodshop, particularly evaluating students’ ability to follow multi-step instructions, are transferable to digital fabrication. Additionally, in science and engineering activities, I often assess students’ ability to reflect on an initial design and use feedback or data to inform subsequent iterations. This iterative design thinking is applicable when assessing digital fabrication projects.
As I continue to develop my own skills in digital fabrication and coding, I will be better equipped to assess student work at a more technical and skills-based level. This growth will allow me to provide more targeted feedback and better support students in mastering both the creative and technical aspects of the fabrication process.
What could be the challenges when integrating programming in your classes?
The most significant challenge for me at this point is that I’m still learning coding myself. I find it hard to create an activity that is wholly exploratory because I can’t always help troubleshoot. It’s easier to keep the project parameters within what I know. Otherwise, I’ve found myself in situations with a backlog of questions and students who couldn’t move forward without support.