It’s always great to see a STEM success story. So when we discovered the the following tale on Twitter, penned by Krista Inchausti, Educational Innovation Coordinator at Convent & Stuart Hall in San Francisco, we just had to include it here!

“We purchased several Makey Makey kits to use in our school's Spark Studio. We began hosting Friday lunches, inviting classroom teachers to come play with our new tools. After we demonstrated the Makey Makeys teachers began brainstorming how they could be used in the classroom. Building upon the demo Makey Makey piano project, they started talking about replacing the piano notes with recorded voices.

“Diane Holland, second grade teacher, came up with the idea of creating a huge ‘teaching cricket’. Her students recorded facts and sound effects for each of the insect’s' body parts, wired the cricket up with the Makey Makey and then took it into Kindergarten classrooms to teach the younger students science. ‘Crystal the Teaching Cricket’ was such a hit (pictured above) that Diane was motivated to take this kind of interactive teaching tool to the next level."

“Diane came up with the idea of talking, life-sized models for her annual Influential Women projects. The girls researched, then recorded facts about each woman. The girls built four women all together, Maya Lin, Althea Gibson, Louise Nevelson, and Sonia Sotomayor. The voices were then put into Scratch and activated by pressing copper buttons connected to the Makey Makey. The great thing about the Makey Makey kit is that it provides an easy-to-use technical foundation to build on, leaving plenty of room for teacher and student creativity!”