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Adafruit To Teach Electronics Through Puppets In New Kids Show
coop0030 writes "Wired has an article up about how Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they're enlisting the help of puppets. Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor 'Ladyada' Fried, Adafruit's founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties. Episodes will premiere this March, and Fried holds hope for them to help inspire the next generation of designers and builders."
Now I can figure out how all this shit works.
Can't wait for the one about magnetics!
Onto a more serious note; it's always great to see somebody bring in some new ideas to bring electronics to kids.
It will be very interesting to see how the concepts are brought across using puppets. I would have liked to see some examples before the story went live.
The big issue that I always find is that when somebody comes up with a new idea for teaching concepts, they can illustrate basic concepts very effectively but get bogged down when the material becomes deeper and not so readily obvious.
Having said that, if they have a character for a 555, maybe they have a good formula!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
We're gonna need another Timmy!
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
That sounds about as exciting as watching grass die. No offense meant here, I get the reference to the designer and all, thats cool. But I don'' see how this is going to excite kids. Kid sees "Hans the 555 timer chip". Kid thinks: "Whats a timer chip?" and unless that is answered in a very obvious way EVERY TIME the character is shown, it'll be lost.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
But not necessarily in that order.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
I'm not 100% sure what a 555 timing chip is so I might have to watch the show myself to learn, lol.
That would be the "74LVC245 - Breadboard Friendly 8-bit Logic Level Shifter" https://www.adafruit.com/products/735 otherwise known as "Shifty"!
You don't even want to know what she has planned for Power Supplies (AC/DC, AC/AC, and DC/DC)!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Irving the IRFZ44V!
Charlie the choke!
Indiana the husky inductor who has to watch out for core saturation!
Don't you remember the Steve Jobs puppet they had that kept re-inventing things that were already invented?
Sesame Street has been educating kids about tech for many years now.
Fat Agnes, Paula, Gary The Gate Array, and Sid.
and more..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_custom_chips
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Oh get a grip. Stick to picofarads and low voltage and low amperage and there's no danger.
You can get into trouble with batteries and wire if you try hard enough.
Many of us were building circuits when we were single digit in age.
I applaud Ladyada. I think what she's doing already (with adafruit) is fantastic. This just adds to my admiration.
Actually, if all you think the 555 can do is oscillate, then you're in for a pleasant surprise.
There are a lot of really amazing things you can do with it - just doing a quick search, take a look HERE.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I can't find any link at Adafruit's site for the puppet shows.
Can anyone kindly share the links?
Thank you !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Biploar Hal, your NPN pal?
Kids are odd creatures. They often have short attention spans, but they can watch the same thing (literally) thousands of times. If the kid learns something from it that is pretty awesome.
as an example you can put an adult male into cardiac arrest with a 9 volt battery if you get blood contact.
seriously a nice chunky INSULATED screwdriver will work for anything in the pico/nano farad range you are more likely to "pop" a cap by putting it in a circuit backwards than get a dangerous shock from a charged cap.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I started trying to teach my kid something about electronics the other day. I tore apart some broken dongle or other to show him what capacitors and stuff look like. But I didn't recognize any of the multicolored 1 mm sq. little bits of stuff stuck to the board.
So I tore apart some broken dongle or other from 10 years ago to show him what capacitors and stuff look like, and the little multicolored bits were about 3 mm sq. Not much of an improvement. I'm almost positive I probably identified one of the bits correctly as a germanium diode though.
So I tore apart some broken dongle or other from 20 years ago, and lo, there were capacitors and stuff there, but knowing what capacitors used to look like in the dark ages isn't that useful really. It wasn't a very productive day.
Boris the Program Monitor (USSR space race surplus):
In Soviet Russia, Program Monitors Boris!
(sorry - that was just too good a fed line...)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
I know this is crazy talk — especially for /.
Couldn't agree more - since most folks can't even be bothered to RTFA, do you *really* expect them to wait to WTFE?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.