The Makey Makey…could this be the ‘next big thing’? (I found my self wondering when we were first introduced to it). I was never one of those high-tech people, whom I admire for their skill and knowledge, but by the end of Wednesday’s session with the Makey Makey I was ready and determined to change the world with the Makey Makey! Throughout the session I had to constantly step back and realize the sophistication of the product we were dealing with because as a member of a generation born into technology it was very easy to take it for granted.
I had a lot of fun working with and getting to know my group. During Monday’s class we had written down some ideas for our Makey Makey creation such as conducting a song or telling a story with sound effects. However, at the beginning of the session one of my group’s members came up with the idea of playing Pac-man through physical contact with the Makey Makey. So we started off with this and we had a lot of fun with it. Then the idea of creating a pac man figure with plato came up and so we created an orange pacman with a purple eye and played pac man by touching the figure than touching another person.
However, playtime was over, we had to do something slightly more sophisticated than that. Therefore we thought of creating a piano-quite the sophisticated idea- and we started by drawing a rough sketch of a a piano on a piece of paper. The next question was, what song do we play? The first ideas that came up were of course, nursery rhymes.(again, quite the sophisticated idea). Then we thought, why not make it relevant to our course’s theme: New York. So we looked up the piano sheet music for ‘Empire State of Mind’ but the notes were way too complicated to play on a 6-note ‘piano’; therefore, we stick with the nursery rhymes. Our first attempt to create a piano was a failure, so we had to do it all over again. At the end of the session, we had a piano and Nancy performed ‘Mary Had a Little Lamp’, and the ability to play Pac Man as well as Snake with the Makey Makey.
It was quite an honor to know that we were one of the first students in the nation to experiment with this new innovative idea; it also was exciting to discover that Baruch College, my college, is therefore an innovative school. The session was a nice experience, and I felt grateful for all the professors that put their time and effort into preparing it for us (the least we could have done was let them record us). I did however, feel like we were just playing around with something that could be used for far more important things but we have the chance to experiment with it outside of the classroom as well. Moreover, as far as how this session connects to writing, I would say that the feeling of having to create something but not knowing what to create is mutual with essay writing and any other creation. In my opinion, it is the most difficult part of ‘creating something’. At this point you just have to take Professor Kaufman’s idea, actually Nike’s idea and ‘Just Do It’.
