Mehackit

Want creative ways to teach technology?

Mehackit provides robotics and programming courses for lower and upper secondary education. During the courses, students build technology projects and learn the basics of programming.

English | Suomi

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HundrED 2018

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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED 2018

Finland 100

Web presence

2015

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Updated

February 2023

Mehackit wants to increase equality and self-confidence by providing everyone with the opportunity to experiment with building technology with their own hands.

About the innovation

What is it all about?

Thousands of young people graduate from high school every year without any experience of the developer’s role in the world of technology. By giving students the opportunity to create something personal with technology, they learn to see technology and their own technological ability in a new way. The world around the students is increasingly advanced technologically, and with Mehackit, many young people are given the opportunity to see how technology works.

Mehackit teaches young people the secrets of coding and technology in a fun environment. The goal is to make creating and building technology as easy and natural as using technology is today. Mehackit also breaks down prejudices associated with people working in the tech industry and gives students new role models.

The courses are already used in over 60 high schools in the Nordic countries. Mehackit courses show how technology can be used for self-expression and as a tool that anyone can use. The study unit teaches young people how to build technology and program in creative ways. In addition, Mehackit's course material offers teachers the opportunity to learn how to teach similar courses in the future.

This page introduces you to the Mehackit Music Programming Course. In addition to music programming, Mehackit organizes robotics and visual programming courses.

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

Innovativeness

Mehackit gives young people the skills to take control of technology instead of just consuming it.

Impact

The courses offer everyone the opportunity to create something with technology and therefore increases the potential for equality in the tech industries. The courses also build a student’s personal self-confidence to use and take advantage of technology.

Scalability

The course content is applicable to many different learning environments and the materials are available in English.

Media

Building technology yourself is exciting

Mehackit has organized over 100 courses in Finland.

Implementation steps

Getting to know the world of music programming

Mehackit's music programming course is a fun way to show teachers how Mehackit can be used to teach programming.

Mehackit's Sonic Pi materials can be found at: http://sonic-pi.mehackit.org/

The material is used throughout the course.

Downloading and learning to use Sonic Pi

Downloading Sonic Pi is easy.

Sonic Pi can be downloaded from http://sonic-pi.net/. The program has been developed by Sam Aaron at the University of Cambridge.

First, get excited! If you are enthusiastic about the topic and the material, it's easier to introduce your class to it.

Experiment in the classroom

Bring the material into class.

Use Sonic Pi and Mehackit's material in music or math classes and show what you can create with Sonic Pi. Students are often excited about programming precisely because Sonic Pi is so much fun. Bring in a colleague or someone else to help out.

The Sonic Pi lesson starts off with teaching you how to play different melodies, go through various commands, and build rhythms. This is an easy way to learn the basics of programming, programming commands, and writing code. All these steps can be found at: http://sonic-pi.mehackit.org/

Sharing results

Share your experiences.

How did the students react to the new program? Did it feel easy or difficult for them? What about you, the teacher? What was it like teaching a completely new thing, music programming?

You can share your experiences and your songs programmed with Sonic Pi directly to Mehackit, at hello@mehackit.org. Share your experiences on social media with hashtag #Mehackit.

Getting acquainted with Mehackit's other learning material

Sonic Pi material is just a small part of Mehackit's learning material.

More robotic & processing material can be found at learn.mehackit.org. Sign up and start learning new stuff!