We were fortunate enough to have the Team from Piper visit our 4th grade class this week and conduct a play-test with their amazing products.
The Piper Team brought over several of their Computer Kits and had the students, in groups of 2-3, play-test them for about 30 minutes per group. In this small amount of time they were able to complete an exercise which consisted of creating simple code, wiring a LED to a breadboard and running the code to switch the light on and off. Some groups even managed to get up to three LEDs programmed to blink intermittently.
The students were totally engaged and seemed enthusiastic about the product and being able to code a LED to light up! We were definitely impressed by the simplicity yet broad potential of the Piper Computer Kit, and are hoping that it got our students excited about coding and programming. Having a team of professionals present and explain their work and expertise to a 4th grade class was very inspirational, and we hope to have them in our classrooms again with more amazing products!
Anna Milada Grossi is currently an Americorps VISTA Project Coordinator, serving through MakerEd at Lighthouse Community Public School. She is assisting in the Making, Art, Design and Lighthouse Creativity Lab Programs.
