Lesson Plan: Makey Makey Interactive Poster

Designed for Year 4 – Year 8

Curriculum Connection:

1. Technology
   - Computational Thinking: Progress Outcome 1 and 2
2. Social Science
   (Level 2)
   - Understand how people make choices to meet their needs and wants
   - Understand how people make significant contributions to New Zealand's society
   (Level 3)
   - Understand how people remember and record the past in different ways

Key Competencies:

• Thinking
• Participating and contributing
• Using language, symbols, and text
  
  

Aim:

Students will learn about Jean Batten's record flight around the world – discovering where she ran into problems and how she solved them along the way. They'll recreate her flight path on a map and pin-point highlights using Makey Makey and Scratch software to code an interactive poster.

Materials:

• World Map
• Makey Makey
• Copper Tape
• Split Pins
• Scissors
• Scratch Software on Device

Lesson Outline

Step 1:

Trace the path of Jean Batten's flight on your map, drawing dots where she ran into trouble. You can find detailed information on her flight here:  https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/jean-batten/

Step 2:

Pick a spot to highlight. In our demo video, we picked Iraq where Jean Batten encountered her first sandstorm and landed in Baghdad. Write down a short snippet about what happened to Jean Batten at this spot – you will use this for recording later.

Step 3:

Cut a small slit in the map over your chosen location and poke a split pin though the top, flipping out the spokes at the back of the paper.

Step 4:

Stick your copper tape: Start under one of the pin spokes (ensure they touch) and run the tape all the way to the edge of your map and wrap it around to the front.

Step 5:

Connect an alligator clip from the Makey Makey kit to the copper tape at the edge of the map and connect the other end to the UP arrow on the Makey Makey hub.

Step 6:

Now it's time to code! Open up Scratch on your device and connect your Makey Makey up with the USB wire from the kit.

Code:

1. From the Events menu, select the instruction "when [space] key is used" and pop it into the coding window. Click on the dropdown menu [space] and switch to [up arrow].
2. From the Sound menu, select the instruction "play sound [ ] until done" and connect it under the first instruction.
3. Select the dropdown menu and click "record".
   
4. Record your snippet from Step 2. Save, and change the "play sound [ ] until done" to "play sound [your recording] until done" by using the dropdown menu.
5. Finish by running your program.

Step 7:

Test your program! Touch the earthing point on your Makey Makey hub with one finger and then press the split pin on your highlighted location. You should hear your recording play back.

Step 8:

Repeat steps 1-7 with as many locations as you want to highlight on your map, and have fun!

This lesson could be adjusted to any amount of projects, think of how your students could use this coding on a different type of content.