Final Project Part I: Brainstorming and Planning

For our final project, Jennifer and I will be working with the Child Study Center to fix some problems that the CSC has and improve the experience of the children and the teachers. Out of the numerous problems and possible ideas that Becky from the CSC provided, Jennifer and I decided to either focus on the problem of controlling noise levels in the classroom or creating a device that would show the children how much time had passed and how much time is still left in an activity or day.

For the problem of controlling noise levels, we though of the idea of creating a dial that would have 3 levels of sound sensitivity that the teacher could control. The teacher could set it for very sensitive (used perhaps during nap time), moderately sensitive (group time), and not very sensitive (play time). The device would sense the sound level of the room and if it was within a good range for the current sensitivity, the mechanical arm or light would remain on green then if it got louder for a few minutes it would move to the yellow region. If room becomes quiet again, the arm or light would go back to green or if it got louder it would move to red.

For the problem of teaching time to young children, we came up with the idea of creating basically a timer/clock and using marbles to show time. Marbles would be held in some sort of a container on the left side and when a certain activity begins, a certain number of marbles that correspond with the amount of time of the activity would roll down a ramp and onto a sensor that would sense the marbles' weight. This weight would then be converted to time. After the amount of time that the activity was has passed, marbles corresponding to the length of the next activity would roll down and the cycle starts again. Every activity would have its on color marble.

Jennifer and I decided to work on the marble clock since Amy said that it was more interesting and the dial device we thought of for controlling noise levels would not work as well as a stoplight. Since the stoplight did not have a mechanism and our marble timer had a mechanism, we chose the marbles.

So for our device, we would have to create the marble releasing mechanism, a ramp, and a container for the marbles.

sketch of our marble time device

While browsing through different marble releasing videos on YouTube we got inspiration from this video that had a simple releasing mechanism made out of Legos. For our device, marbles would be funneled down through a tube and then at the very bottom there'll be a block that would move left and then right to release and push one marble out.

sketch of our marble releasing mechanism

But when we started building our prototype using the Legos, We found that a track with notches could instead be used to regulate the release of the marbles.

sketch of sensor side of device

While making the prototype and new marble release mechanism, we found that a ramp between the marble releasing part and the sensing and collecting part would no longer be necessary.

When we presented our idea to Becky she was concerned about a few things.

One was where this device would be. We said that it would be hung high up on a wall so children could see it but not touch it. It would also have some sort of screen over it so that no kid could possibly get a marble and choke on it.

Another concern was what if a teacher wanted to cut an activity short or if an activity needed more time. We came up with placing two buttons on the device; one that when pressed would delay the moving on to the next activity and another that would stop the time for the current activity and move right on to the next one.

Another concern was the sorting of marbles and setting up the device for the next day. We came up with the idea oh having a container that had separations in it. Marbles for one activity would go to one section and when it was time for the next activity's marbles to be released, the container would be rotated so that the new marbles would be placed into a new section. Then at the end of the day, The marbles can be placed back into the tube in the order of activities for the next day.

1st prototype