The Millipore Sigma Curiosity Cube visited the Cleveland area for three days. They spent a day at Benjamin Franklin Elementary and a day at Cuyahoga Heights Elementary, then rounded out their visit with a stop at the Holden Arboretum. The Cube is a STEM lab in a shipping container. They travel across North America and stop in places where they have offices/facilities to do some STEM lessons with schools and the community. They also have one in Europe. An education specialist travels with the cube and scientists from the local MS facility also help with the lessons. Here is their 2022 Tour schedule. They work on lessons and logistics from December to about February, then get back on the road.
As part of the Millipore Sigma Employee & Community Engagement program, they have Curiosity Labs , where scientists and engineers give back to their community by bringing hands on, interactive science lessons into the classroom. All lessons are developed with Life Science employees and education experts, aligning to the Next Generation Science Standards. Their target audience is students ages 8-13, but can adjust that.
( curiositylabs@milliporesigma.com ) . These are some of the recent in school experiments that they have done. They also have Curiosity Labs at Home , a website with some easy STEM experiments to do at home. All of these excellent STEM resources are free. The webpages of experiments are available to everyone. The Curiosity Cube and site visits by scientists are only available if you are near a Millipore Sigma facility.
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I bought an Elecfreaks Cutebot to play with and compare it to an Edison.
I have a few other things from Elecfreaks and have liked them. I also bought the Lithium battery pack to make it rechargeable. I actually got mine on Amazon (free shipping).
They have similar price points, but the Cutebot is dependent on availability (& price) of micro:bit (I have always liked the microbit). They are both browser based coding. One advantage the Edison has is the icon coding for the non/pre-readers. (I have asked Elecfreaks to create an icon coding for the Cutebot). They are about the same size.
The Lithium battery pack for Cutebot is a nice add on, rechargeable is often better than replacing batteries - if you remember to recharge it. But it does add to the price ($14 on amazon, $8 from Elecfreaks)... $30 + $20 + 14 = $64 still similar to buying 1 Edison (if you can get a micro:bit and if it is $20) They both do a good job with distance sensors and motors and line sensors and sound detection/playing. They both are Lego compatible. I like that they can be more than a “car” A plus for the Cutebot is that their LED’s are RGB, so you get to code colors. A plus plus is they also include two RGB neopixels. I really like the ability to code colored lights. Even more on the plus side, they have included breakouts for two servos as well as pin1 & pin 2. So you can add 2 other inputs/outputs (buttons, thumbstick, IR sensor, LCD screen, OLED screen, more neopixels…) This is great when you get into building things other than “cars”. I think the Cutebot might beat out Edison…. especially if we can get someone to create icon coding site/extension for it. Gather up a variety of Lego’s and start creating. I made a few videos connecting and coding various things |
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