Makey Makey

Makey Makey is essentially a control pad with wires that allow anything to be the buttons. For example, you could attach the wire from the up arrow to a banana, and that banana would then act as an up arrow. Pretty cool, huh?

Because I am extremely uneducated on most technology-related things, this website does a better job of explaining how Makey Makey works:

"The MaKey MaKey is a two-sided circuit board. On the more simple, top side, the MaKey MaKey has 6-inputs: the up/down/left/right arrow keys, as well as the space bar and mouse left click. When you flip the board over, you’ve got access to 12 more keys: W, A, S, D, F, and G on the keyboard side, and up/down/left/right mouse movement and left/right clicks on the mouse side. The bottom header has six ground (aka Earth) outputs, while the top header is an expansion/output header. There are also a few LEDs on the back to indicate whether you’re pressing a mouse or keyboard key."

In essence, Makey Makey is like a tiny formattable computer. It is an amazing way to open up the doors to computer programming for students and other children and can turn any regular game into something entirely new. Even bringing one of these kits into the classroom and letting groups of children take turns experimenting and creating would be an excellent tech or science lesson. Makey Makey opens so many doors.

This video will hook you:

Resources:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/makey-makey-quickstart-guide#what-is-the-makey-makey