Programming Micro:bit to Enhance Creativity

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Location: La Nouvelle Ballroom, Table 3
Experience live:

Participate and share : Poster

Paola Mattioli
In this workshop, participants will experiment and create their own interactive stories with the micro:bit board and its sensors. We will discuss the importance of reading in STEAM activities by inventing and programming a story.

Audience:	Library media specialists, Professional developers, Teachers
Skill level:	Beginner
Attendee devices:	Devices required
Attendee device specification:	Smartphone: iOS Laptop: Mac, PC Tablet: Android, iOS, Windows
Participant accounts, software and other materials:	https://makecode.microbit.org/ App Microbit if using smartphone
Topic:	Creativity & curation tools
Grade level:	6-12
Subject area:	Performing/visual arts, STEM/STEAM
ISTE Standards:	For Educators: Collaborator Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues. Facilitator Foster a culture where students take ownership of their learning goals and outcomes in both independent and group settings. Learner Pursue professional interests by creating and actively participating in local and global learning networks.

Proposal summary

Purpose & objective

Students love listening to reading aloud, so we will introduce the importance of reading in steam activities to invent a story to code using the simple board micro:bit. Using a picture book to support a scientific topic engages the student thanks to the emotion and the involvement that the reading of the picture book generates in the student. The picture books are books where the illustrations have the same or greater importance in the creation of the meaning. So they help students to contextualize the focus of the lesson and students will be more facilitated in understanding difficult scientific concepts. As sometimes picture books can inspire questions or sometimes they are a resource to find answers, we will invent a story coding micro.bit board and use the interaction between the board and real objects.

Outline

Micro:bit can respond to touch, sound and movement via programming. This permits to invent a huge variety of ideas and finally create real objects that interact with the coded story. Inventing a story with this board will permit us to test a code and surely to experiment mistakes. Errors will be very important because debugging is a great activity to improve one’s culture and test one’s skills.
They will learn the possibility to use stories and picture books for their steam projects, becoming confident with the STREAM project (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, Math).

Supporting research

www.nsta.org

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Presenters

Paola Mattioli, Istituto Marymount