High school

Project- Light Up Poetry with Chibitronics “Love to Code” Arduino Board

/ gravescolleen / 6 Comments

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Programming Goodies!

About two months ago, I was honored to get to receive a prototype of a “Love to Code” Arduino board that Jie Qi and Chibitronics are currently working on. (If you don’t know how much I love paper circuits and Chibitronics, then read this post before going any further.)

The first thing I had to try was to hack my own disco paper circuit from our Big Book of Makerspace Projects and get my disco dancing on it’s own!

Computational Tinkering

I LOVE how easy it is to map out a circuit and then clip this “Love to Code” board to the circuitry. I decided to try out an RGB LED and do a little computational tinkering to see how different sets of code would effect the blink.

It was so simple to dream up an idea and map it out with copper tape, that I began to get way too complicated in my design ideas. I had a few failures, so I started chatting with other makers about design ideas and brainstorming more ways to use this new technology. Suddenly I had it, I’d seen lots of black out poetry, but what about using lights to “light up” poetry?  I spoke with Josh Burker about tweaking this fun poetry idea and he made a super cool project with lights and poetry.

See Josh’s light up poem here.

Light Up Poetry

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I’ve been dreaming up multiple ideas for what I wanted my own light up poetry to look like, and I kept coming back to one of my favorite poems by e.e. cummings: “l(a” I absolutely adore this poem and how the words themselves look like a leaf falling, so I knew I had to make this poem as if the words were animated and portrayed the loneliness of a leaf as it falls to the ground. I wanted each stanza to light up separately and give the viewer some time to think and experience the words as the falling leaf. Initially, I wanted to have the circuit on the clipboard, then have a sheet with the poem and put a semi-transparent gold paper with leaf drawings on top. I made my circuit, practiced drawing leaves, and tested out the light.  Plus, I decided to incorporate my battery holder from sewing circuit club.

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When I started testing out my ideas, I found that the words would barely show through when I layered multiple papers. But I still really still only wanted leaves on the top layer and the words to not be visible until the light shined on them. I kept trying different types of paper and printing the poem darker…. it wasn’t working, but I didn’t want to give up on my idea.

I ended up making the poem into an image, flipping it and printing it so that the words were printed in reverse (or mirror image) on the back side of the paper. I mapped out a new circuit and hot-glued together a cardboard frame so the light would be able to diffuse a bit before lighting up each word on the top paper.

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My reversal trick worked, but I still wanted to harness the light from those little LEDs. So I made some foil leaves to aid in reflection, poked holes for the LEDs to shine through, and covered the bottom of the foil with scotch tape to insulate my copper tape traces and prevent short circuits. (And I ended up adding more LEDs to the template above)

 

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The pieces fit together and now the light gives off a magical glow of a hidden leaf under the drawing.
I hacked a simple fade code on my phone to light up each stanza and then light the first and last stanza together so readers would see the word “loneliness.” I’m pretty happy with the result! See below:

I have more ideas about lighting up poetry that I want to try soon, and I hope this tinkering will convince students (or teachers!) to play around with literacy in this way.

Coding and Paper Circuits

One of the things I really love about Arduino (versus something like Raspberry Pi) is the hands on aspect. But all the wires and breadboarding can be confusing when you are totally new to this type of making. I remember when I was hooking up my first Arduino project and I thought I had to match all the wires to the correct numbers on the breadboard so that it would look exactly like the diagram. I had no concept of what I was doing electronic-wise. I knew I had to hook wires from the Arduino to the bread board to the components, but I don’t think I really understood how any of it worked.
And I think that’s why I now prefer sewing circuits. Once I started sewing my circuits and programming and controlling components with e-textile boards like Lilypad, Flora, and Gemma, I actually started to understand how the wiring and coding was controlling the project. 
All of the coding and wiring made so much more sense when I had hands on experience with the components. That’s why I often suggest teaching students paper circuits before sewing circuits, and before programming with Arduino. I think these skills build on one another and students will need a solid foundation to understand how circuits work so they can pull those components off of breadboards and put them into projects.
I’m stoked about Jie’s new board because I think it will make it even easier for you or your students to understand how the microcontroller is working and I think laying out copper tape traces will make your learning visible. 

Resource: Hacking Poetry with Makey Makey

/ gravescolleen / 7 Comments

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Last spring I hacked poetry month with pencil drawings, Scratch Programming, and Makey Makey. Then this fall for the SLJ Summit, Aaron and I led a few brave librarians through the process of hacking poetry with Makey Makey. What I love about this activity, is that by having students visualize poetry with drawings, they think deeper about the poetry. But even better, by having to record their own reading of the poem in Scratch, students actually spend quality time reading and re-reading poetry lines and begin to correctly intonate words and phrases to portray the poem’s mood. I taught ELA for almost a decade and rarely saw students recite poetry with such enthusiasm! I think that by recording their voice in Scratch, and playing that reading through their own drawings, this process makes students want to attempt to add the right pausing and inflections.

Resources

Today I thought I’d consolidate those posts and share a challenge sheet so you can try this in your own library makerspace or classroom!

  • Makey Makey Hacked Poetry Post One
  • Makey Makey Hacked Poetry Post Two
  • Makey Makey Poetry Challenge Sheet Google Doc (For printing and sharing with students)

Collaboration

^^This post was sparked by this tweet today! ^^ I love to see public libraries partnering with school libraries as a way to bring Maker Education to schools. I’d never have been able to teach my students to solder if it hadn’t been for the Denton Public Library! Plus, I love to be able to share my own expertise with the community (like when I taught a sewing circuitry workshop at the public library.)

Partnering with the public library is not only a great way to extend your budget, it’s also what the Maker Movement is about- Collaborating and seeking help from experts when needed. 

I can’t wait to see what happens at Salmon High School when Salmon Public Library helps students Hack Poetry with Makey Makey!

Share your own Makey Makey poetry with #makeymakeypoetry on Twitter or Instagram! I’ll collect your examples to display on this post!

Your Work Here Soon^^

More Cool Ideas with Makey Makey and Poetry

And because there are even more cool ideas out there,here is just a few rad ideas I found other educators doing with Makey Makey and Poetry:

  • Interactive Blackout poetry by David Saunders:

  • Ollie and Makey Makey Mashup at Constructing Modern Knowledge 2015!

  •  Three word stories with Scratch and Makey Makey from Ricarose and The Tinkering Studio! First post about this workshop is great too: Read it here. (I know, this isn’t really poetry, but this three word story idea could easily be hacked for a poetry workshop!)