STEMNET Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network

Together with some colleagues at The Open University, I ran a workshop for UCL's Schools Outreach programme to give students some hands on experience of programming and ubiquitous computing using the Sense language and Sense Board (http://sense.open.ac.uk).  I was given the task of developing a new activity that we could use as an introductory demonstration that the students could be guided through replicating. The idea was to use the SenseBoard as a novel input device to determine the timing for playing notes of a piece of music. Using and infrared LED and sensor to detect a beam break, it was possible to control the timing of each note by moving one's hand in time to the music. The result was pretty neat, and the students had a lot of fun building it for themselves (Video demonstration - http://www.youtube.com/watch?f&v=LKZItnAM5kw). Having completed the activity to build this 'Music Maker' project, students then came up with their own ideas which they then implemented with our help.