This spring Dori Friedman, a tech and innovation teacher in California, challenged her students learn about music, sound waves and more. Then students were challenged to design and build musical instruments with Makey Makey and Scratch. 

Dori's Inspiration Instrument

Because Dori is awesome and inspirational, she prototyped a few different Makey Makey instruments and then created this amazing Makey Makey harmonica. 

The #makeymakey harmonica is working! Planning to iterate on my design. Just bringing you along on the journey! What I’m looking most forward to is getting to see what the ss make! #makered #innovation #science #music #scratch #handsonlearning #STEM #STEAM #collaborativeteacher pic.twitter.com/m5XWxNjGV7

— dori friedman (@dorifriedman) February 22, 2021

 Hear the harmonic in action on Dori's Instagram. 

Work in Progress

The students started with drawing prototypes and coding these drawings with Scratch.  Then they started prototyping with cardboard and other upcycled materials. 

Final Projects

Dori's school believes in interdisciplinary learning, so students learned about the science of sound in science class, learned about world music in music class, and in Dori's class her students were challenged to design, build, and program their own instrument based on something from their world tour. Students used Makey Makey and Scratch to make playable interactive instruments made out of conductive materials and cardboard. Project Gallery

It is always hard to take apart student work, but we are happy to digitally archive the student work on our blog! Great work, Dori and students! 

Project Gallery

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