Final Project Ideas

Assignment: 
In class today we observed children of two different age groups in order to brainstorm ideas for our final project that would enhance the experience of the children and their teachers while utilizing all of the skills we have learned thus far in the class, including  feedback and control methods we have been working with these past few weeks.

My Observations:
Since we only were able to observe the children for a shorter period of time I wasn't able to truly get a sense of the needs of the students and their teachers. However, the things I did notice are listed below.

• Only a certain number of children were allowed to play on a certain object at one time.
• Some kids wanted to jump from activity to activity without cleaning up after themselves
• A few of the kids got out too many toys and lost track of all of them
• The teacher had to remind the children to keep the volume down
• A few of the kids playing in the tree house-like structure threw toys off of the top through the bars. 

Teachers Suggestions:
I found the teacher's suggestions to be very useful for generating ideas since she has a more intimate knowledge of the dynamics of the class room. Her suggestions of problems to address and other important information is listed below.

• The children are very fidgety and won't stay on their carpet squares
• The children are not able to see out of the window downstairs
• The kids sometimes put things in between the cracks of the cabinets and the wall 
• They often get very loud while playing and the teacher has to constantly remind them to quiet down
• The children get so involved in playing with the water and sand tables that they don't realize that the sand and water is getting all over the floor
• The bathroom toilet flushes very loudly and scares some of the children
• The bathroom locks are confusing to the children and sometimes they are unable to get them open
• The children often forget to flush the toilet or wash their hands
• Sometimes they leave the water faucet running
• They often take more than one paper towel or piece of toilet paper

The teacher also brought to our attention some things to keep in mind after her years as a teacher about the nature of children and how that relates to our projects.

• Ideas need to be reinforced through different senses such as sight and hearing for the children to understand and remember
• Ideas need to be repeated
• Feedback should be positive when possible
• We need to make sure that the signal that our device is not so interesting that it distracts, scares or encourages the children to do the thing which we are trying to prevent.
• Educational devices are highly encouraged
• There are certain size parameters that they must abide by in order to follow safety laws
• With safety in mind, they encourage the children to engage in "risky play" which allows them to test and realize their limits

Problems/Ideas of Interest

1. Carpet Squares: As a child I was very fidgety and had a lot of trouble sitting on my carpet square, for that reason this problem interests me. The most obvious place to start with this problem it seams to be is with a touch sensor that knows when the child is or is not sitting on their carpet square 
2. Washing their hands: Hygiene and cleanliness is of vital importance to make sure that the children and teachers stay healthy. For this reason implementing a device that helps the children remember how long to wash their hands for and remind them to  
3. Noise level: Some sort of noise sensor would need to be implemented that would go off either by lighting up or some other signal. The challenge with this is to make sure the signal is not too exciting to encourage the noise or conversely to scare them. Also, there needs to be a clear correlation between the sound and the noise level that can be understood by the kids.
4. "Risky Play": I was intrigued by the idea of "risky play" but I am unsure how that could be implemented given our parameters

Reflection:
It was surprising that the teachers have chosen to purposefully limit the children's interaction with technology in the class room. I find their reasoning compelling and tend to agree for the most part that children need to be in charge of their own play and interact with the world without a screen. Seeing as the teachers are allowing us to build new electronic devices for their classroom, they are not completely against technology, rather they encourage a healthy balance. It is important to me in this design to make sure that our goals for the design align as best they can with the educational philosophy of the teacher.