With Piper, students learn STEM with a hands-on and student-centered experience. When students learn through the Piper blueprint, software challenges, and coding tutorials, they develop problem solving and collaborative learning skills. After learning and practicing the fundamentals, they can then build off of this foundation towards a higher-level learning experience.
After Piper, students will know and be able to do the following:
Build a computer with the parts provided by reading exploded diagrams on an engineering blueprint
Learn about circuits and electrical components to connect complex circuits with simulations in Piper's StoryMode (our custom-built version of the Raspberry Pi Edition of Minecraft)
Connect circuits with the Raspberry Pi, breadboards, and jumper wires to learn about electronics and conductivity
Discover commonly used inputs and outputs (buttons, switches, LED lights and buzzers)
Understand binary states and both series and parallel circuits
Write code to solve problems using a block-based language (Blockly) in PiperCode
Explore computational thinking and view the relationship between visual and text-based programming languages.
Program physical devices and interactive games using Blockly in PiperCode
PiperCode is also an opportunity to extend learning with deeper engineering design and computational thinking challenges.
Learners quickly progress from simple to complex computer science concepts and practices.
Specifically, students will:
Review key electronics and programming understandings
Understand how to use design thinking to solve problems
Practice critical thinking
Explore computational thinking practices by completing prompts, creating code, or debugging and remixing base projects.
Express creativity by designing and creating their own projects
Extending and transitioning between block-based and text-based languages
