Gold, Nicolas;
Himonides, Evangelos;
Purves, Ross;
Baxter, Hazel;
(2025)
A Programming Platform Design for Children to Create and Explore Hybrid Musical Instruments.
Software: Practice and Experience
10.1002/spe.3434.
(In press).
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Abstract
Engaging young learners in coding activities is increasingly important to prepare them to participate in a contemporary computationally centred society. Engagement comes from finding appropriate motivation and the use of materials and methods that are suitable to the educational stage and learning opportunities. In this article, we present our experiences of designing and developing a Python-based platform for children to use in our Music Making with Music and Making (MMMM) workshops, enabling school students to engage with hybrid digital music instrument design through programming synthesisers and undertaking LEGO construction. We document our understanding of the design and operation of the BrickPi3 and Raspberry Pi Build Hat systems and discuss our approach to using these as part of a simple software platform for schoolchildren to use. We present our design (and discuss alternatives considered) and the way it was successfully used by 61 11–13 year-old children in workshop settings. We discuss the technical issues encountered and their resolution, and finally reflect on the positive feedback provided by teaching staff and potential for further development. The inherently integrated and inter-disciplinary nature of our work aligns with and makes a positive contribution to the Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) movement.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Programming Platform Design for Children to Create and Explore Hybrid Musical Instruments |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/spe.3434 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3434 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Software: Practice and Experience published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | education, LEGO, music, programming, Python, Raspberry Pi |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208694 |
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