The Kookaberry is brought to you by the AustSTEM Foundation
Making STEM easy to teach and learn.
What is the Kookaberry?
The Kookaberry is a microcontroller (a small computer) that is designed and made in Australia and uses plug-and-play sensors (peripherals) and pre-coded apps.
It is slightly larger than a credit card, robust, simple to use,and works straight out of the box.
Students are able to measure, display, communicate, store, and transform data gathered from the world around them!
Busy teachers are able to use it as easily as they now use apps on their smartphone.
It has been designed from the classroom up to make STEM easy to teach and learn.
What can the Kookaberry do?
It can be used in practical learning projects as diverse as weather stations, art installations, mathematical games, physical fitness, and musical experimentation.
It can also be used to:
- Observe, measure, store and display environmental data (Science and scientific thinking)
- Demonstrate the interdependence of components in a digital system (Technologies and systems thinking)
- Refine a design based on evaluation and testing (Engineering and design thinking)
- Gather real world data for numerical analysis and statistics (Mathematics and working mathematically)
- Design and implement algorithms to solve problems (computational thinking)
- Control external devices (robotics)
- Make the normally invisible technology visible (Technologies)
- Demonstrate wireless networks (Digital Technologies)
- Edit and run code on the Kookaberry in real time (Digital Technologies)
- Support integrated learning (All subjects).
How can I obtain a Kookaberry?
There are very few Kookaberries left from the last small production run, and these all committed to will all be used for small trials and evaluation.
The next production run will commence as soon as there is enough firm interest for at least 200 boards.
These 200 boards will be deployed across Australia for final trials before general distribution begins.
Kookaberries for these trials will be available for the start of Term 3, 2020 if the order target is reached before the end of 2019.
Click below to express an interest in implementing Kookaberries in your classroom in 2020.
Learning plans
Learning plans, including lesson activities and units of work, are at the heart of this website. Content will be mapped against state and national curriculum codes.
Teachers will be able to search for plans that complement STEM teaching and learning across specific subjects in their own state.
Each learning plan will cross-reference the required app(s) and peripherals.
Apps
Pre-programmed applications (apps) ensure that relevant data, measurements, or specific activities such as servo or pump controls, are available as soon as an app is selected; peripherals are connected; and the app is run.
The MicroPython code within an app can be viewed, edited and run using either a simple text editor, or the Kookaberry's own KookaIDE editor.
An editor using block code will be available shortly.
Peripherals
Plug-and-play peripherals include input devices such as sensors, keyboards, push buttons, potentiometers, and switches; and output devices such as loudspeakers, buzzers, servos, pumps, heaters, and relays.
The software drivers for each peripheral are included in the code of the app using them.
Read the article featured in the Warren Centre's magazine, The Prototype:
Kookaberry: Shaping the Future of STEM
Professional learning
The Kookaberry is a serious educational tool intended to shape the culture surrounding the implementation and use of technology across the curriculum.
Professional learning will be provided prior to Kookaberries being used in a classroom.
Learn more about professional learning with the Kookaberry →
Technology equity
The Kookaberry ecosystem is inexpensive, totally self-contained, simple to maintain,and operates in the absence of the internet, WiFi, smartphones and tablets.
Classrooms in very remote, remote, and outer regional Australia will have access to the same technology and support that inner regional and major cities currently enjoy.
The AustSTEM Foundation
The AustSTEM Foundation is not a commercial organisation.
It is a not-for-profit charity whose long term aim is to increase the number of students electing to study higher level STEM subjects from Year 9 onwards.
AustSTEM's strategy is to raise the average STEM literacy of students leaving primary school through the free distribution of Kookaberries in Year 5 classrooms across Australia.
AustSTEM is funding the development of the Kookaberry digital learning platform to achieve their aim, but will support any other medium which has the potential to do a better job.
