Hands on Education -Toys that Entice Innovation and Expression

2 members like this

Comment by PMDunn on April 2, 2012 at 3:23am: NerdW- LOL on Chemistry set... Chemistry was something that kinda freaked me out as a kid..and still does from time to time, when dealing with my Sour-Dough Starter. :)

I like "retro" toys of the 60's & 70's...I actually collect old electronic kits and such. I have a 130 in 1 electronic set myself! I wouldn't mind a set of these Bite Blocks myself. These Toys that teach can be very simple. FYI: Subject: Basic Electronics - showing the measurement of Resistance with an ordinary Pencil line.

Materials : 1 Pencil ( sharpened), 1 Piece of paper, 1 multi-meter (to show the measurement in electronic terms.

With your Pencil Draw a line on the paper. It doesn't matter what the length is. With the multi-meter, place the probes at each end of the line. By setting the meter to read ohms, You can actually see how much resistance is in that pencil line. if you make the line very thick darkened by repetitive tracing, the resistance changes.

Anyway...that's just an example with electronic, But These New Toys are enabling our kids, as well as anyone, the ability to grasp an idea faster. Being able to apply something you are in process of learning , speeds up our ability to produce...as well as unleash imagination.

I notice no matter how complex we become in our innovation, we still get the most from Basic hands on learning.

Comment by Morfeene on April 2, 2012 at 12:16pm: Interesting stuff. Checkout Raspberry Pi as well - I have two on order :-)

Comment by PMDunn on April 2, 2012 at 2:56pm: Raspberry Pi, had to good look that one up...very cool, A single Board system! Well, I want one! It sounds like a solid little deal, and no complaints about Linux!

I have an old Toshiba Tecra and Timex sinclair system , Computer science, ...:)

From what I've read, Raspberry Pi is using SD card for boot and storage??...That does remind me of the old Sinclair that used cassettes.

I'd like to see a laptop built with these bite blocks, and human powered ( such as hand crank conversion)....One that could be built in school and used in an Intranet structure created by the students. It would be powerful enough for the sake of learning computer science.

Thanks for the lead! ~P

Comment by Morfeene on April 2, 2012 at 10:14pm: Right - it uses a custom Fedora Linux on an SD card, so if little Johnny screws the Pooch - you just re-flash the card and off you go again. Kids can't render the system unusable - well - unless they spread peanut butter on it or something