Makey Makey Kit

Stuck for a gift for a technology loving kid? Look no further! Enter the Makey Makey kit. I first came across the makey makey kit at a teacher training course I was on. I’ve since seen them in a few places – including the family Science Week event at the Convention Centre and the Maker Festival in Merrion Square. The kit costs about €60 and connects to your laptop of PC via a USB cable. But what exactly is it?

The website tag line is ‘Connect the world to your computer’. You can find out all about the kit here. Essentially you can create your own games controller out of household objects, experiment with simple circuits, play the piano with bananas, create a dance mat – the possibilities are endless! We have connected playdough to ours and controlled our computer by touching playdough, we have hooked up bananas and played notes on an online virtual piano by touching different bananas, we have made a physical piano out of cardboard and tin foil that then played notes and we have drawn a controller for the classic game Pacman that we then hooked up to the Makey Makey and controlled the Pacman character with! There are lots of videos and tutorials and ideas online to help you out in getting started.