2017: A Blog in Review

As the year comes to an end, we’re taking a look back at some of our top posts from the year.

The SparkFun Team

• Top 6 Worst Pieces of Advice We've Ever Heard About Maker Education
  • As the title implies, this post takes a look at the worst advice we’ve heard about getting started with maker education. Turns out, it is possible to learn from bad advice.

• Top 5 Lessons for Integrating Makey Makey Into Your Curriculum
  • Makey Makey is incredibly popular for teaching the basics of conductivity. Plus, it’s really fun to play with! In this post, guest blogger Colleen Graves shares her favorite lesson ideas for Makey Makey.
• 5 Reasons Your School Needs a Makerspace
  • If your school doesn’t have a makerspace, this post is for you. Makerspaces provide a number of benefits to students, starting with these five.
• Create Your Own Paper Circuit Teaching Tools
  • Not only are paper circuits an inexpensive way to teach students about simple circuits; they’re a lot of fun to make too. The tips and resources in this post will make it easy for anyone to add paper circuits to their instruction.
• Helping Students Transition from Block-Based to Text-Based Programming Languages
  • Younger students often start off learning how to program using block-based languages such as Scratch. While these make it fun and easy to learn to program, at some point it becomes necessary to transition to text-based coding. In this post, we explore a few options for easily transitioning from Scratch to Arduino.
• Getting Started Resources for Raspberry Pi
  • Raspberry Pi is all the rage right now in schools due to its low price tag and variety of potential uses. The resources in this post make it easy to get started working with Raspberry Pi in the classroom.

Thanks for making this a great year! If we missed any of your favorites, please let us know in the comments. And be sure to subscribe to ensure you don’t miss any great posts next year!