Playing around with the Makey Makey was certainly a bizarre experience. I mean, how often are we promoted to play games, experiment with different materials, and create something that’s fun rather than useful?
To be honest, it was awkward to step out of my comfort zone and use my mind to do something that I seldom do. On my way to school that day, I wondered why we were given the chance to experiment.
The answer soon became clear. Baruch wants to educate the next world leaders. Whether it is creating new technology or finding an innovative way to solve problems, our educators want us to take hold of the steering wheal and feel like we are truly in charge of the nation’s progress. Bringing about real change seems far-fetched for many of us, but experimenting is, without a doubt, the first step to reaching that goal.
When my team member and I were first presented with the Makey Makey, we felt utterly confused. It was as if we were given a random tool and told to make some sense of it. So with the little instruction that we were given, we connected the perforated red rectangle to a computer. Step by step, we learned that for it to work, it had to be grounded to one of us. We attached its wires to some play dough and did the most logical thing that we could think of: make little blobs of dough into piano keys. Finding a virtual piano online, we were able to play some of its keys by taping on the dough that corresponded to each key. However, we were limited in the amount of keys that we could make. To top it off, we were making something that would not be useful to either one of us; we don’t know how to play the piano. On the verge of admitting defeat, we joined another group to see where we could direct our bit of acquired knowledge.
Image provided by http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/05/makey-makey-win/.
The group that we joined was also working on a virtual piano, though the team members used different materials to create their keyboard. It was surprising that when we collaborated and shared our understanding of what the Makey Makey can do, we ending up making something that was really different than what we tried to do beforehand. I suggested that we work with a virtual sketchpad to draw, and from that idea sprang our creation of a track pad. With small copper squares, we recreated the right and left click buttons on a mouse, and also the four arrows that are normally found on a computer keyboard.
Creating something as complicated as a track pad with basic materials was an amazing and eye-opening experience. In one class time, all of us became fairly acquainted with this new piece of technology that revolutionizes the power of the everyday computer user.
Though the skills in essay writing seem to be so far removed from the skills needed to create something spectacular with a Makey Makey, the two actually coincide. For our last essay, we were given very little direction. In other words, we were given the ability to write about any topic that we liked. Empowerment was scary, both for writing my essay and figuring out what to do with the Makey Makey. Both cases made me question, what is important to me and what would I take joy in creating?
As with my experimentation process, it wasn’t easy to figure out what I wanted to do and how to do it. It would take trial and error, and then once I thought of an idea that suited me, I tried to make it work.
