Cool interview with CEO of KinderLab Mitch Rosenberg from SmartBrief.
Students can apply STEAM skills to anything from building with Legos to creating malicious computer code. How do you design activities that emphasize responsible application of these skills?
Rosenberg: Of course, any skill can be used for good or ill, including literacy, communication, and STEAM skills. The important thing to developing an ethical basis for using skills is to imagine the people who will use your creation.
Our curricula are focused not only on the question of how to build something, but also on the why question. For example, when our curriculum introduces the general process for designing things, half of the steps of that process involve talking to potential users, sharing your hypotheses with them, and imagining how they would use things. Moreover, unlike screen-based STEAM tools for students, KIBO encourages collaboration and team processes during the design, building, coding, and decorating of their STEAM creations.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
