If you haven’t heard about our Start of Summer Sale, there’s some things we’d recommend you do immediately. First, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Next, make sure you’re a part of our mailing list. And, then, check out the items involved in the sale! We’ll discuss some of them in this post, but there are a lot to look at. To celebrate the start of summer vacation, we’re offering 50 percent off these select items while supplies last and there are some pretty good deals to take advantage of. To see what EdTech items are a part of our sale, click the link above and remember to keep an eye out for future announcements regarding special sales and deals from us!
Raspberry Pi 3
For students, makers, and inventors, the Raspberry Pi is already an affordable technology. It’s a powerful microcomputer that fits in the palm of your hand and allows people to invent and code in a million different ways. The proponents of the Raspberry Pi pride themselves on this piece of hardware being small, powerful, and affordable. Typically running you only about $35, our 50 percent off sale makes it just $17.50—while supplies last! Learning with a Raspberry Pi presents students with a number of unique educational opportunities starting with the board itself. There are many different components to it, including an HDMI port, a CPU, GPU, SD card slot, Micro USB power port, and GPIO pins. Using these components and the code they write on a computer, students can create all sorts of inventions using the Pi!
The versatility of the Raspberry Pi allows for it to be used simply to teach programming or as part of larger projects that could teach additional STEM concepts, including engineering. The Raspberry Pi 3 model is 50 percent more powerful and the previous model and offers upgrades in other areas besides speed, too. Students can program in multiple languages using the Raspberry Pi, including Python and C—making it best suited for students who are slightly older. While it can be used to replace the CPU system of a traditional computer, this is not exactly what the Raspberry Pi was intended for. Using it in this way is not incredibly efficient and could result in your computer operating at less than full speed. It is, however, great for helping newcomers to coding learn more about various languages and how the code they create can dictate the functions of the device.
Unlike other EdTech tools, the Raspberry Pi is a standalone item. Since it is so affordable (and even more so as part of our summer sale), it’s often easier for educators and hobbyists to start out with using it. In order to maximize the potential of the Pi, users also need an SD card, an SD card reader, a power supply, an HDMI cable, a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and an ethernet cable. This sounds like a lot, but it’s nothing you can’t find at just about every local tech store. Once you have all of the components you need, setup is fairly simple and straightforward. The cables connect to the Pi and to the monitor and then everything is set up just like a traditional computer. If you’d like to take advantage of this chance to get a Raspberry Pi at 50 percent off, we encourage you to shop now to access our summer sale prices!
Hummingbird Duo Premium Kit
Another top tech tool that’s now discounted 50 percent on our store is the Hummingbird Duo Premium Robotics Kit. Normally sold at $269.00, you can now grab one of these robotics kits for just $134.50 while supplies last! Each of the Hummingbird kits is designed to combine STEM and STEAM through hands-on making and the Duo Premium Kit is no exception. Students can use the craft materials that come in the box to design and construct a robot that most would consider to be more on the low-tech side of things. Despite not incorporating a ton of technology (at least in the building phase), Hummingbird gives students plenty of opportunities to innovate and think creatively. It’s truly able to give them a MakerEd experience before they start to focus solely on programming it.
Using materials like twine, plastic gears, motors, and adding in any other art supplies they can find, students can use Hummingbird to explore a unique perspective of robotics. It also helps students learn about both engineering and robotics through the making process since they have to carefully attach each piece they’ll be using. The possibilities Hummingbird helps create include the construction of kinetic sculptures as well as animatronics, which each involve plenty of technology and arts-based design. Besides the components that come in the kit, students can also use a wide range of different craft materials to create a robot in any shape or style they want. These materials include cardboard, paint, and glue, which also helps make Hummingbird a great robotics option for makerspace learning.
While the Duo Premium Kit is suited for one student or one group of students, there are other Hummingbird kits that are different sizes and more conducive to larger groups of kids. You can see all of the available Hummingbird kits on our store, but only the Duo Premium Kit is part of our summer sale. Once students get a Hummingbird robot assembled, they can program it using Scratch, Snap!, Ardublock, and some other languages by connecting it to a computer or laptop. It’s able to be used by students as early on as kindergarten and suitable for use up through middle school. As for the programming, it’s drag-and-drop and tile based, giving students the opportunity to explore all sorts of recognizable concepts and even try out using Python or Java! Once again, to see all of the items available in our summer sale, visit the Sale section of our store!
K’nex Maker Kit
There are a bunch of different kits from K’nex and, if you’ve ever had kids or worked in a school makerspace for long, chances are you might have heard of them. They typically come with a whole bunch of plastic pieces in different shapes and sizes. These pieces, which include axles, wheels, and frames of various sorts can be used to build different structures. They snap together easily and allow students to practice some simple engineering and help them build a foundation in this important STEM discipline. K’nex are great STEM tools for a classroom or a makerspace, especially for students who are in the middle of an engineering or physical science-focused unit. And, while supplies last, educators can get the K’nex Maker Kit Basic from us for the half-off price of $25.00!
This kit in particular is designed to be able to be easily integrated into school makerspaces. It comes in a large tub, in which educators can store all of the many pieces that come in the kit and also use it for transporting the pieces from place to place. It’s great because this tub is sturdy and definitely able to be used by teachers time and time again. In the Maker Kit, there are over 400 pieces, including the wheels, axles, rods, and all of the many connectors kids need to invent and play. It’s great for use in early education settings and includes instructions for 50 different building ideas, so it will be tough for students to run out of invention challenges no matter how long they’re able to use K’nex! They can build anything from a plane to a car and even a butterfly using the components in the kit and a little bit of creativity.
K’nex kits also generally come with a teacher’s guide either on a CD or one that can be accessed online as a PDF. If you’d like to see some of the other kits from K’nex we have on our store, they can be viewed on our store and include an intro to bridges set, and intro to simple machines set, a renewable energy set, a classroom collection, and a transportation set. Each of the other kits, while not on clearance, are also very affordable and equip kids with the parts to build hundreds of additional models wherever it is they’re learning. All in all, the K’nex kits help unlock simple but lasting hands-on learning experiences for kids in the early grades and the variety of projects they can complete is another good selling point. Be sure to grab the Maker Kit as part of our summer sale and explore the other K’nex kits on our store as well!
Makey Makey GO
A more portable version of the popular Makey Makey, the Makey Makey GO offers students the same experiences they can have with the Makey Makey. Instead of featuring a board with slots to connect jumper cables that represent the mouse, space bar, and arrow keys, the Makey Makey GO sports a built-in USB connection so students can simply plug it directly into their computers. Previously, the traditional Makey Makey required the use of a USB cord to get it connected to computers. The Makey Makey GO is about the size of a traditional USB flash drive, but contains a lot of potential in this small package. It can do everything that the traditional Makey Makey can, but it’s small enough to fit in a student’s pocket or on a keychain!
With the Makey Makey GO, students can design and build just about as many inventions as they can with the regular model. It’s designed to offer compact innovation while still permitting students to see how electricity can be used to power conductive objects. In fact, kids can use their own conductivity to transform almost any object into an Internet-based touchpad with the snap of an alligator clip. Keeping with the spirit of the original Makey Makey, students can also use the Makey Makey GO to turn everyday objects into functioning tools. Plus, it’s a bit simpler for students to use the Makey Makey GO than it is the Makey Makey—especially for kids in kindergarten, first, or second grade. The smaller Makey Makey GO is better suited for smaller children and certainly those who enjoy working with their hands!
In terms of STEM education, the Makey Makey GO is a great addition to the Makey Makey brand, and its easy portability makes it a great choice for those adventurous makers who are always on the go. It’s also a phenomenal option for enlivening an outdoor STEM learning curriculum or creating a mobile makerspace. There aren’t many tools that instantly help kids stretch their creativity and literally think outside the box, resulting in countless new inventions every year—mostly from innovative kids who dream them up themselves, but this is one of them! To take advantage of our half-off summer sale and grab a Makey Makey GO for just $12.48 while supplies last, click over to our store to shop!
3D Printing Filaments
We wanted to make sure to cover all areas of STEAM education in our summer sale, so the final items we’ll highlight do certainly have an artistic element to them. As part of the sale, you can get filaments for two different types of 3D printing tools—the 3Doodler 3D printing pens and the MOD-t 3D printer. The ABS and PLA filaments for the 3Doodler are half off while supplies last at just $5.00 each and the PLA filament for the MOD-t is also half off and available for just $10.00 while supplies last. There are seven packs of 3Doodler filament that are a part of the sale—a mix of PLA and ABS filaments in various colors and there are three MOD-t filaments to choose from. To see all of the options that you can get, check out our store.
Using these filaments, students are able to create just about any 3D printed objects they need to (within reasonable size restrictions, of course). More specifically, the 3Doodler filaments creates 10 inches of three-dimensional doodles with every one inch of plastic filament. So, with 10 inches of filament inserted into the pen, students can create 100 inches worth of 3D designs! It’s also easy to peel off of both paper and stencils in case students want to revise their structures and they can bend or form it as well to create art in the perfect shape. Each pack that’s part of the clearance sale contains 25 strands of 3Doodler filament, allowing students who have a 3Doodler to invent and design for quite a long time!
Finally, we have the PLA filaments for the MOD-t 3D printer available in polar white, New Matter pink and cupcake pink. These filaments are compatible with the MOD-t 3D printer, which, unfortunately, is no longer in production. If you already have a MOD-t, however, you’re in luck because these PLA filaments are what you need for printing. They provide makers with the ability to produce high-quality prints and they’re made to be break-resistant. Also, these filaments could potentially be used with any 3D printer that accepts 1.75 mm PLA filaments, making them a bit more valuable to people who don’t have a MOD-t. So, there you have it—some of the coolest STEM tools that you can get at 50 percent off from our store while supplies last!
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