1)“Construction of musical instruments with clay, that play music through the Makey board and Scratch.”
Subject: To teach the shape and sound of musical instruments of the symphony orchestra, by constructing them with clay, and how they can be connected to the Scratch programming environment with the help of Makey board.
School of creation: Theodoropoulos Private High School
School of testing: Theodoropoulos Private High school
Aims: Students learn the form and sound of the instruments of the orchestra. Also, they become familiar with the programming structures, the Scratch programming environment and the use of makey board. Finally, to develop student’s social skills through group work.
Teaching material: Power Point presentation with general information about musical instruments, clay, makey board, Scratch, musical instruments’ sound in MP3 format.
Age of students: 14 years old
Preparation and teaching time: For the preparation of the activity it took a week and the teaching intervention lasted two (2) academic hours (90 minutes).
Lesson plan:
1) Students, after being divided into groups, present with the help of Power Point the information about the musical instrument they have chosen.
2) Each team constructs with clay the selected instrument.
3) Students create “scripts” in Scratch with which a sound is produced when activated by a computer key.
4) Each group connects the musical instrument to the computer through the Makey board. The Makey board activates the appropriate computer key and triggers the corresponding “script” when the student touches the instrument to which is connected. At this point students touch the clay and music is produced.
5) After they have connected all the musical instruments, students play music simultaneously as happens in an orchestra.
Worksheets: In order to present information about the instruments, students have created Power Point presentations that include text and images. They can also search for more information on the internet.
Teachers reviews: The activity was very enjoyable both for students and teachers. Students learned by doing and combined knowledge from different fields such as computer and music. Also they expressed their wish to take part in similar interdisciplinary activities.