Teachers around the world are using Chibitronics in a multitude of ways. It can be used in any subject area and the possibilities are really endless. I found a few lessons that I particularly liked as they pertained to my grade level. I teach third grade and one of the science topics we have is patterns of motion. One way we explore this is through what Foss calls Twirly Birds. These are essentially like paper helicopters. We make these and then modify them to see how different modifications change their patterns of motions. How cool would it be to add LED’s to them?!? Well, one teacher did that and made them light up! This could add so many neat possibilities. Now students can observe them in the dark and see what the lights look like twirling around. They can also see how the light patterns change as they make their modification. So neat! This turned a STEM project into a maker space project as well!
Another way teachers have used Chibitronics is by making a Light Up Your Town display. This is where students design a model of their town, or landforms in their area and make a circuit to display power to the area. This would require students to do some research on their city or town’s layout, as well as get a sense for the population in this area. This lesson goes great with third grade social studies standards. It teaches them about communities and change as well as a sense of population density. I have my students currently look at satellite images of the earth at night to get an idea of population density and this would be a great way for them to demonstrate what they learned!
The third lesson plan I found was Light Up Poetry. This involves writing a poem that has words which only show up when the LED shines on them. In this project each stanza of a poem lights up separately to help aid in the readers experience through the poem. In the example, the author draws leaves and puts the stanzas inside the leaves. The author then used a fade code to light up each stanza. I think this project could be incorporated into any grade level. I do however think it is a more challenging project than the other two and would need to be completed after students became more comfortable with Chibitronics.
Resources
Epstein, L. (2017, April 17). Light-Up Paper Helicopter with Circuits. Retrieved from https://chibitronics.com/projects/light-paper-helicopter-circuits/
Graves, /C. (2016, December 9). Project- Light Up Poetry with Chibitronics “Love to Code” Arduino Board. Retrieved from https://colleengraves.org/2016/12/09/project-light-up-poetry-with-chibitronics-love-to-code-arduino-board/
Mocny, K. (2017, April 25). Light Up Your Town. Retrieved from https://chibitronics.com/projects/light-up-your-town/
