Friday, April 12, 2013
Adafruit debuts "Circuit Playground" -- a kids' puppet show about electronics
Boing Boing: I've written before about Adafruit's "Circuit Playground," a kids' puppet show about electronics (with accompanying coloring book and plushies!). The first episode, "A is for Ampere," just went live and it's a smashing history and explanation of the ampere and the electron.
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4 comments:
I was totally on board the first time I heard about their coloring books, but making a video series (COMPLETE WITH PUPPETS) is even better. As much as I think that the youth of today should spend more time playing outside and use less hand-sanitizer (or none at all) like when I was a kid, a video series like this can at least teach them something useful. Electricity still is something that I don't fully understand and admittedly I learned something watching that video (regardless of how corny it might have been) it's still practical and keeps the material light and fun enough to keep kids interested.
I like the idea behind these videos. I will most likely always support videos willing to help the youth learn and grow. However, the problem I had with this video is the fact that although it was a vague representation of electrics from the little knowledge I have of it; especially in the sense of not clearly defining everything. For instance, I may know what and LED is but a child may not and yet they never explained it. I think this is a great idea, I just feel it needs more tweaking.
I love the idea of a show for kids about electronics. It seems like in today's electrical powered world it will be important for young kids to learn about how the things around them work. The show it's self is less impressive. I'm not the target audience, so I shouldn't really judge to hard, but I really don't think that the explanations that they gave in the episode were very helpful or fun. For the most part it sounded like they were reading out of a basic electronics book, but extra slow so that kids could understand. The learning is only going to be valuable to kids if it is surrounded by fun and interest about the world. The Silly robot might be interested in learning about current, but I don't think that's what kids need to become interested themselves. I did like the French guy though. He was funny.
The video was awesome. I am with Joe, in that I did learn something by watching the video. I think this video is a great idea to help ANYONE understand what is happening in the invisible world of electricity. So I must also say the color books are a great advantage and a exciting extra for kids to have. If I could remember I would probably watch the rest of these videos.
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