Cougar Ridge Students Use Circuitry to Add Audio to Posters

At Cougar Ridge Elementary, teacher Cathy Chmielewski’s students recently presented “World Celebrations” posters they created -- but these were no ordinary posters.

Working together, each group of students attached “Makey Makey” circuit boards to their posters, which focused on different celebrations from around the world. The circuit boards connect touch points on the posters, and activate a recording for each touch point. Students presented their posters in a gallery style, and some groups also shared “artifacts” to highlight that particular world celebration.

Asked how the technology augments student writing, Chmielewski said “I feel like it gives them a buy-in into what they're doing. I've found that their paragraphs tend to be a lot more elaborative because they know that they're going to have to record something for people to interact with.

“I feel like they're really invested in the venture,” she said, noting that her students focus on quality writing, then use the technology to supplement their project. “They've had tons of fun with it. At Cougar Ridge, we've been doing this [project] for the past couple of years now and it's always a project that's been a lot of fun for the kids. They always come up with something that's super imaginative and they really learn how to research and use the research for what they're doing, which is the biggest thing for us – being able to get all this stuff together.”

Let's hear from some of the students, sharing about their World Celebration touch-point poster projects:

• Sadie: “We made a ‘Makey Makey,’ which is where it, like, plays a sound – it plays what we have recorded. The words of our project. … It's helped me learn that you have to persevere even if it breaks. You have to keep rebuilding and retrying.”
• Anderson: “What I like about this technology is it's easy to code and you can do a whole bunch of stuff with it. … I have built an audio, like, you can hear the paragraphs in person, like with headphones or out loud so you can hear, like, each other's media because this is paper.
• Pearson: “We have to choose a celebration with a partner. We make a poster of it, and then we code something in Scratch that tells us what's on the paper and page that reads the paragraphs to us.”
• Vivian: “[I like] that it has lots of ways that you can code it. … My favorite part of this project was making the food honestly, or, learning all about Kwanzaa. Each day has a meaning and I only knew before that there were seven days. I did not know that each one had a meaning.” Describing the dish that they created to go with their presentation: “This is called Ambrosia salad. It's whipped topping with fruits, shredded coconut, and nuts. It's a sweet dessert they serve at Kwanzaa.”