STEM

Chibitronics Paper Circuits, #CircuitGirls, and Aiding #Girlsintech

/ gravescolleen / 2 Comments

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Chibitronics Classroom Pack Review

Whoa! This classroom pack from Chibitronics is the best thing since sliced bread! It has 90 LED circuit stickers and 6 rolls of super skinny copper tape!

If your students worked through the STEM Starter Kit, then this would be an excellent way to get them to start designing their own circuits! This is also an excellent tool to run a paper circuit workshop even if your makers haven’t used the kit since Jie has most of the templates available at Chibitronics for free!

While you can use regular LEDS to make paper circuits, I love how easy Chibi stickers make crafting your own paper circuitry. Plus, they lay flat so it’s easier to make art with them. (I love combining paper crafting and circuits for the ultimate STEAM activity!)

My favorite thing about the Classroom Pack are the super skinny rolls of copper tape. For the last two years, I’ve been telling my students to cut their copper tape in half. This skinny tape is much easier than that extra step, plus it’s easier to lay smooth and fold corners. You can see in the pic below that the tape on the right is half the width of the tape on the left. Plus, since the pack comes with 6 different rolls, you can set out a roll of tape for 6 different tables of makers!

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I can’t wait to do some paper circuits with my students this month at Ryan Library Makerspace!

Chibitronics Effects Pack

I also bought the effects pack and had a great time tinkering with ideas for my May-ker Display I’m working on for the last library display of the year. Pretty sure I’m going to have to write up a Donors Choose grant to get a bunch of these packs for my RHS makers!

Note: I didn’t really have any direction for this paper circuit project, I just knew I wanted to use my new effects pack and creative lettering techniques from this book a student requested for the library. My 5th period aide came up with the quote, and I decided to use my Makey Makey soft conductive tape so I could make a circuit through the lettering. Then for the “night time sky” I attempted some constellations and used the awesome skinny tape from the Chibitronics Classroom Pack. The effects stickers are just plain rad and it didn’t take me long to design a working circuit, but that’s probably because of all of the Lilypad Arduino projects I’ve been working on. I probably wouldn’t introduce this effects pack and this concept to my makers at RHS until they’ve designed many of their own working paper circuits!

My History with Chibitronics

I started using Chibitornics notebooks last year when I realized that I needed to “make” room for girls in my makerspace at Lamar. I wrote a Donors Choose grant and was able to start a girl’s tech group called “Circuit Girls.” Every week for the rest of the semester, the girls and I learned about circuitry by creating circuitry art in Jie Qi’s awesome Circuit Sticker Sketchbook. We learned about simple circuits, parallel circuits, and even DIY Pressure sensors. Jie is so awesome she even has these templates available for free on the Chibitronics site! Plus, I love Chibitronics Circuit stickers so much, I’ve included an entire chapter on Paper Circuits in The Big Book of Makerspace Projects using Chibi stickers as supplies. (I can’t wait for you to see these templates with Aaron’s art! If you look close on the cover, you’ll spy one!!)

The Circuit Girls are Lamar were also my first Donors Choose recipients. Normally, it is hard for a library to budget for consumables. For this reason, I crowdsourced our funding so each girl could take home their circuitry notebook at the end of the school year. One of my favorite things about this was that it not only shared what we were doing at Lamar, but the girls would use their new knowledge to create their own light up thank you cards for our donors. Here are a few of their examples:

At the end of the year, I was happy to hear the students enjoyed Circuit Girls as much as I did! I’m also happy to know that the Circuit Girls are still alive and kicking with the new librarian at Lamar, Kristi Taylor.

Kristi’s Circuit Girls Promo for this school year:

So now you can see a little about why I love this light up notebook.  It’s a great way to get girls involved in STEM.

Whenever I host a workshop, I share Chibitronics templates because paper circuits are an excellent way to learn about circuitry! Then students can go even further by learning to sew circuits, and even further by exploring Arduino microcontrollers to create soft circuit wearables or stuffies. (Yep, we have a chapter dedicated to sewing circuit projects in our book too!)

At my high school, I’m getting girls involved in STEM by running #GirlsinTech camp. This way Kristi and Lamar can hold onto the Circuit Girls hashtag and track their fun. I’m not having weekly meetings yet either as the best way for me to get girls involved is to host afterschool camps that I schedule ahead of time. I’m hoping next year that we can get a weekly club going. During our 1st camp, we tinkered with paper circuits and chatted with Jie from Chibitronics, check out the video below for excellent tips from this artist engineer on paper crafting.

I’ll be speaking more about getting girls involved in maker programming at ISTE this summer! So come check that out too!

Disclaimer: I did not receive any funding or endorsement for this review. Chibitronics sent me this pack after seeing multiple posts on Twitter about my love of paper circuitry!

Review of New littleBits STEAM Student Set !

/ gravescolleen / 2 Comments

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Ayah Bdeir just announced a new kit at SXSWedu today, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on this awesome new STEAM Student Set from littleBits.

There aren’t any new Bits, but this collection has some of my favorite Science/Space kit bits from littleBits and some great accessories for building some simple inventions. Lots of cool sensors, the new updated DC motor that makes building cars easier, pulse, an inverter, fork and more. See the full set here.

My favorite thing about the kit though is the AWESOME book that comes with it. It is evident that littleBits has listened to educators and our ever-pressing need for clear instructions.

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Yes, the maker movement is all about tinkering and playing to learn, but sometimes, you just need basic instructions! I love the larger sized manual and the extensive section on learning how each bit works.  When I did my synth workshop (Thank you, Chad Mairn!!!)  at the beginning of the school year, I followed Chad’s footprints, sharing how each Korg littleBit worked, and it really helped the students focus on learning what kinds of sounds we could make. Plus, it helped us understand what is inside of a synthesizer and how some of our favorite music has been created.

The Manual

The Student Set manual has great instructions for how each bit works that will really help students slow down and learn about the functionality and usefulness of each component in the kit. I loved the theory my 7 year old had while playing with this section learning about inputs and outputs and how the “button” works.

“When I let go (of the button) the electricity is stuck, but when I press on the button, the electricity is not stuck and it goes through (to the fan).” We went on to talk about how this functions sort of like a gate, allowing electricity to move and keeping the electricity from moving.

I’m all for letting students tinker and play to learn, but I’ve seen quite a few high school students that did not grasp the “input” vs. “output” coloring system as quickly as a younger more playful student might. Instead, they gave up on the littleBits concept and tried something else in our makerspace. I’m hoping these instructions will allow students to tinker and learn with less guidance from an adult.

Real World Analogies

My other favorite thing about this manual is the “real world analogies” section for each Bit. This is another example of a connection that we, as educators, usually “hope” student make as they tinker with littleBits. However, not all students draw these connections while tinkering, so being included the manual is just bonus awesomeness for me.

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Temperature Sensor

When my daughter started playing with the temperature sensor, she immediately thought it would be cool to see if she could change the temperature reading on the numberBit by blowing on the sensor. Again, it’s important to note that littleBits are not new around my household, but the instruction manual made her see littleBits in a new way and unlocked some of that magical curiosity we love to see in our younger students.

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Prototyping Tips

I love, love, love these prototyping tips! Some of my students often get caught up in perfection and their first idea and they don’t try enough different prototypes to really understand the invention cycle.  Thank you for these tips! Can I have a poster for my makerspace please, littleBits?

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Projects

I like that littleBits has put together real steps for making specific projects. Again, I am all for students creating and inventing on their own, but it always helps to follow some basic instructions first. Especially when you are learning how something works. Too many times, if a student doesn’t understand basic concepts or how each littleBit works, they cannot create an amazing invention. Following a few projects is a great way to help students learn the language of Invention Literacy (something I learned about from Jay Silver) and demystifying how things work. Personally, I’ve been learning to use Arduino the last few years by following and completing projects written by others. I’m only finally to the point now after 3 years where I feel confident enough to create Arduino projects based on my own ideas (3 wearable Arduino projects coming out in my new book!)

The”Invent a Self-Driven Car” is a super cool project, but I wish the kit included the wireless receiver and wireless transmitter so we could invent our own remote control to drive our car, but I guess that is included in the Gizmos and Gadgets kit. Other project instructions in the kit include an art machine, a throwing arm and a security device.

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Inventing

After learning in depth about the bits and making the first project, my 7 YO was ready to start tinkering and seeing what else she could create. She quickly pulled out the forkBit and added a few inputs and outputs. She said, “Mom, why isn’t this working?” When I pointed to the placements of inputs and started to explain, she said, “Tricked you! This only works if I press this button AND move this slide switch.” Wow. My 7 year old just explained AND gate logic? And after just 30 minutes of playing? That’s pretty awesome.

 

Open Challenges

I love the last section of the manual as well. There are 4 open challenges encouraging students to “Hack your Classroom”, “Invent for good”, inventing a Rube Goldberg like contraption, and lastly a “hack your habits” challenge. I’m hoping to institute the “Invent for Good” challenge at my own library and see if my own students can “invent a product to make a difference in someone else’s life.” My students came up with some pretty cool stuff during the littleBits Halloween Challenge.

Issues

My 7 year old and I still had issues mounting littleBits on the mounting board (this has always been a pet peeve of mine), but its time for me to look into the other mounting solutions offered by littleBits and now that this manual has a full description of each, hopefully I’ll find a new preferred method!

UPDATE: My set was a sample set and luckily littleBits is already on the mounting board case! The new STEAM sets will come with new MOUNTING BOARDS! Lucky you! These look pretty cool and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. I like how they somewhat resemble a PCB Breadboard.

Lastly, the box says it ideal for 3-4 students, but I would expect to use this as more of a partner activity with no more than 2 students per set.

Last but not least….

I just found out from Diana Rendina that the Teacher Guide is available for free! So go check it out and pre-order your new littleBits STEAM Student set today!

Disclaimer: This review consists of my own opinion. littleBits sent me a complimentary student set for this review, but otherwise I am receiving no compensation for this write-up.