Makey Makey Blog

Meet Our Featured Educators

Celebrating innovative educators from around the world who are using Makey Makey to transform their classrooms and inspire the next generation of inventors, makers, and creative problem-solvers.

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Educator Posts

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Countries Represented

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Creative Ideas

20 results

Assistive TechJan 2023

Ramsey Musallam

Secondary Science Instructor · Sonoma Academy, Santa Rosa, CA

Ramsey has been teaching science for over 20 years and discovered Makey Makey after meeting co-inventor Jay Silver following his TED Talk. In his "Engineering for Social Good" class, students use Makey Makey to build assistive technology devices — including custom adaptive game controllers for students with cerebral palsy — grounding invention in empathy by first studying the lives of people with disabilities.

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Biology + CSJul 2023

Ulla Hauptmann

Biology & Computer Science Teacher · Wald-Michelbach, Germany

Ulla teaches 5th through 13th grade at a public school in rural Germany and serves as a Makey Makey trainer at the Hopp Foundation — the educational initiative of SAP's founder. She bridges biology with physical computing, guiding students to build Scratch stories about UN sustainability goals with Makey Makey as their input device, and has created German-language instructional materials to make invention literacy more accessible.

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Music EdApr 2023

Conductive Music UK

Music Education CIC · United Kingdom

Enrico Bertelli founded Conductive Music UK in 2012 to make music-making accessible through technology, and Yui Shikakura joined as a Makey Makey Ambassador in 2018, bringing her background in early education and a PhD in Kabuki performance. Together they run internationally recognized STEAM music workshops and were named in the UK's National Plan for Music Education.

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Librarian / STEAMJul 2022

Eric Fogle

STEAM Teacher & Librarian · Haine Middle School, Seneca Valley, PA

Eric runs the CIRC (Creativity, Innovation, Research Center) at Haine Middle School, where students choose their own path — designing game controllers, building musical instruments, or creating interactive art and poetry with Makey Makey. He celebrates every divergent design and uses the project as a springboard to explore which everyday materials conduct electricity.

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Library MakerOct 2022

Josh Burker & Margaret Pastel

Makerspace Educator & Librarian · Westport Library, CT

Josh Burker and librarian Margaret Pastel co-created "Make Makey Make," a three-day summer camp for grades 6–9 at the Westport Library. Each session built on the last — from exploring conductivity and single-button controllers, to building musical instruments, to constructing oversized "Big Button" controllers that required full-body movement to play.

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Music + CodingSep 2020

Liam Baum (MisterBombMusic)

Music Teacher & Creative Coding Educator · Queens, NY

Liam is one of Makey Makey's original Ambassadors — a middle school music teacher who discovered the kit at a workshop in 2016 and immediately ordered one to build a tin-foil drum kit. He now teaches enrichment classes blending Makey Makey with p5.js, Sonic Pi, and Scratch, and built a fully functional 2.5-octave xylophone using two Makey Makeys.

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Interactive ArtsApr 2019

Kalo Haslem

Technology Foundations & STEAM Teacher · Capitol Encore Academy, Charlotte, NC

Kalo teaches every student at her K–8 public arts-integration charter school on a rotating schedule, weaving Makey Makey into projects across all grade levels. Her students have built Makey Makey guitars, skeeball games, interactive flowers, Ozobot-integrated maps, and living garden presentations — using invention as an alternative to traditional reports.

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Coding for KidsJun 2020

Ali Adil Ali

Educator & Founder of Coding for Kids Iraq · Baghdad, Iraq

Ali works at Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and founded "Coding for Kids Iraq," a free initiative teaching coding and robotics to children across the country. To reach students who couldn't afford a physical kit, he built a virtual Makey Makey entirely inside Scratch — so no child has to miss out on the experience.

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Digital ArtsSep 2018

Frazer Merrick at Signals

Sound Artist & Education Coordinator · Signals, Colchester, England

Frazer is a sound artist and Education Coordinator at Signals — a digital arts charity in Colchester that uses creative technology for social and learning outcomes. He uses Makey Makey in his own professional art practice and in "Draw, Code, Go" workshops where young people create interactive artworks inspired by their favorite books, combining hand-drawn illustration with Scratch and Makey Makey in library settings across England.

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Game DesignOct 2018

John Lynch & Susan Klimczak

Game Designer & Community Educator · Boston, MA

John Lynch is a teacher and game designer obsessed with adding physical movement to coding; Susan Klimczak runs Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn (L2TT2L), a 17-year STEAM program training Boston teens to teach free summer camps across the city. Together they created "#ExplodeTheController" — reimagining game controllers so players have to run, jump, and balance to play, bringing the workshop to MIT, Harvard, and 25 Boston community organizations.

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Cultural STEAMFeb 2019

Tim Thatcher

STEAM Trainer · Using Technology Better, New Zealand

Tim facilitates STEAM workshops across New Zealand anchored by one driving question: "How do we teach innovation literacy while also culturally empowering students?" In his signature workshop, teachers paint conductive Māori Tukutuku patterns onto paper, wire them with Makey Makey alligator clips, and connect the whole assembly to Scratch digital paintings — creating interactive conductive lightboxes that honor indigenous culture through technology.

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Scratch + Coding2019

Matthew Moore

Computing Teacher · Primary School, England

Matthew is the dedicated computing teacher at a 600-student primary school in England, teaching children from age 4 to 11. At Scratch Europe, he ran a wildly popular "Interactive Storybook" workshop where participants build a physical 4-page paper book wired with Makey Makey and brought to life through Scratch — a project so elegantly simple that, as Matt says, "it's almost hard in how simple it is."

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STEM in the Gym2019

Eric Turrill

PE Teacher & STEM in the Gym Creator · Round Hill Elementary, Northern VA

Eric is a physical education teacher at one of Virginia's designated coding schools who invented "STEM in the Gym" — a curriculum of 16 Makey Makey + Scratch activities that merge physical movement with coding concepts. When his school received a Makey Makey grant, Eric saw the perfect bridge between his gym and the computer lab: students program games they then play with their whole bodies.

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Higher Ed2019

Rachelle Beaudoin

Digital Art & New Media Professor · College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

Rachelle teaches Digital Art Studio and New Media at the College of the Holy Cross, where her physical computing course challenges students with a single open-ended prompt: "Create a work of art that is interactive." She switched to Makey Makey in 2019 to lower the barrier to entry, and her students now combine it with Adobe Premiere, SoundPlant, and OBS to build hybrid art installations where process always matters more than product.

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Physical Computing2019

Derek Robertson

Senior Lecturer in Education · University of Dundee, Scotland

Derek develops digital literacy in pre-service teachers at the University of Dundee — and he does it with jelly. His alter ego "DJ Jelly" plays Beyoncé samples on a bowl of jelly connected to Makey Makey, instantly demonstrating that anything can be an instrument and breaking down every assumption student teachers hold about what "coding class" looks like.

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Digital Orchestra2019

Chris Ippolito

Technology Coordinator & Makerspace Teacher · Marian Baker School, Costa Rica

Chris moved from New Jersey to Costa Rica to teach technology and run the makerspace at Marian Baker School, where he works with students from grades 1 through 10. His two signature annual projects — the "Digital Orchestra" and the "Wildcat Global Arcade" (a Scratch game tied to one of the 17 UN Global Goals) — guide students through the full Engineering Design Process while connecting invention to real-world impact.

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STEM Education2019

Kimberly Boyce & Bradley Quentin

STEM Lab Teachers · Houston ISD, TX

Kimberly Boyce and Bradley Quentin built STEM lab programs from the ground up at two large Houston ISD elementary schools serving over 1,000 students each. Their signature "Biography Bottles" project has students research a historical figure, code a Scratch presentation about them, build a bottle model of the person, and wire it with Makey Makey so visitors can interact with history by touching a button.

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Engineering Outreach2019

Steph Elder

STEM Program Coordinator · Destination Exploration, University of Lethbridge, Canada

Steph holds a civil engineering degree and coordinates Destination Exploration at the University of Lethbridge — part of Canada's national Actua STEM network — running camps, after-school clubs, and teacher professional development across Alberta. In her Makey Makey Invention Literacy Workshop for teachers, participants built a time-telling board, a "wet boots" reminder mat, a math game, and a break-choice check-in board, turning everyday problems into inventions.

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Occupational Therapy2019

Michele Morgan & Jennifer Schank

Occupational Therapists & Makey Makey Advocates

Michele Morgan is a school OT building an inclusive makerspace for students with physical impairments; Jennifer Schank is a former Johnson & Johnson product designer turned OT who uses Makey Makey directly in clinical practice — including a blow switch for a patient with C1-3 spinal cord injury to play Flappy Bird. Together they champion Makey Makey as a serious accessibility tool and teach its applications at conferences and university OT programs.

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Accessibility2019

Chelsea Rutledge & Jill Berner

High School Math Teacher & 5th Grade Teacher · Alabama & California

Chelsea Rutledge's algebra students at Calera High School designed assistive devices for their peers with special needs — including a floor piano, a whack-a-mole game, and a dance revolution pad — powered by Makey Makey. Jill Berner's 5th graders at Olinda Elementary went even further, building "#vestbuddy," a wearable Makey Makey + Raspberry Pi talking vest for a non-verbal classmate, giving him a voice through a garment his peers made with their own hands.

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Know an Amazing Educator?

We are always looking for inspiring educators who are using Makey Makey in creative ways. If you know someone — or if that someone is you — we would love to hear their story.

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