Tag Archives: making

Arduino safety system for bikes made at IC9 Bologna

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On April 26, 2018 the “Ardubike” project was completed and tested for the next School Maker Day exhibition that will take place in Bologna on May 12.

system

Five third grade students attended an optional lab for 30 hours (3 hours per week) organised and conducted by Luca D’Agostino, professional educator at IC9 Bologna lower secondary school.

In this lab, students have been learning how to use the Arduino board, how to connect  sensors to the board and how to program the board with Mblock.

The final project developed with these tools is a safety system for a bike, that includes lights, turn signals and a fall alert based on a compass position control. (S.A.F.E. , Signal Alert of Fall Embedded).

turn signal light

The system includes:

    • LED stripes for front and back safety lights and turn signals
    • A joystick for turn signals
    • A potentiometer for lights with 4 intensity levels
    • A compass to check the vertical bike position and put on the alert signal when it falls off.

fall

Link to the school website

Makey Makey game for a special needs student made by his classmates

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Makey Makey® programmable boards are used at Istituto Comprensivo 9 in Bologna both in primary and in lower secondary school.

Students get a basic learning on how to program with Scratch in ordinary classroom activities, and in optional labs they can go further and develop animations with their own contents and ideas. These labs are carried out with a Project Based Learning approach, by developing real products that must be designed by the students themselves, developed and tested to be used by others, or presented in public events, as, for example, the annual School Maker Day.

The best students’ creations are published in the Scratch site in the school gallery classiIC9BOGuercino.

A second grade class of the lower secondary school includes a special needs student who has developed a good affective relationship with his schoolmates, thanks to their supporting teacher who has always encouraged communication and caring. So the class decided to prepare a special gift for their friend: a game made with Makey Makey and Scratch.

Since there are 23 students, they are divided into 5 groups with the task of designing 5 different animations connected to 5 different keys of the Makey Makey board: arrows up, down, left, right and space.
makeyboard

Every group of students designed their own idea, chose the external circuit connected with their key, and programmed the related animation. In the animations they added their own images, photos, sounds, voices in order to adapt it to their friend’s experience and emotional reactions.

After testing one by one, the 5 different animations were assembled into a complete Scratch project including all background images, sounds, sprites and blocks and published in the Scratch site: Animazione Completa MakeyMakey 2A.

Thanks to professor Ms. Manuela Fabbri of Bologna University, who often collaborates with IC9 for undergraduate’s training, on April 17, 2018 the young authors were given the opportunity to present their project in a seminar for students attending the course of Technologies of Education.

Link of the seminar slides