Final Project Part 1

Brainstorming Session

Objective:
Our goal is to create a mat that the children will want to sit on when it is group time. If group time happens after playtime, children often do not want to leave their fun activity to come to group. They try to finish what they are doing or wash their hands for a long amount of time. We want to create a mat that is fun for the children so they want to sit on the mat at the start of group time.

Ideas

1) Create a mat with four color sections. The teacher would control with part/color the mat would respond to. Once the child sat on the mat, a sensor would be depressed that would make a light would turn on in the mat so the children know that they sat on the right section. The children would need to sit on a mat the teacher chooses. This would make sitting on the mat a game for the children and they would want to sit on the mat.

   Possible Problems: The mat would be too big for the classroom. If the teacher had a controller that      controlled all of the mats, there would be a lot of wires involved that could be a hazard to the              children. Also, there would be no visual cue to remind the children where to sit which could lead to    confusion.

2) New Edited Idea: Create a mat with only two sections to conserve space. To have less wires, my partner and I would try to find a wireless way for the mat and the sensor the teacher has to communicate. We would also create a large spinner wheel to act as a visual for the children to look at. A sensor would be attached to the spinner that could sense what color the arrow is pointing to.

Brainstorming Mat Sensors

1. Light Sensor: A light sensor would sense if the child was sitting or not based on the amount of light that reaches the sensor. When a child sits on the mat and covers the sensor, the sensor would read dark. The largest problem with this idea is that the light sensor would need to poke out of the top of the mat and could be very uncomfortable for the children to sit on. Another problem is that the child would need to be sitting directly on top of the sensor for it to work. If the child was sitting on the side of the mat, it would not register.
2. Weight Sensor: A weight sensor would be able to detect the weight of the child. The benefit of this sensor is that the child could be sitting on any part of the mat and the sensor would be able to pick it up. The problem with this idea is that weight sensors could be expensive to buy.
3. Button Sensor: A button sensor senses if the button is pushed or not. There would be multiple button sensors under the mat, so no matter where the child sat on the mat, the sensor would be able to tell that a child was on the mat. A possible problem would be that it could be uncomfortable for the child to sit on. To make it more comfortable and stable, we could add a layer of stiff material above the buttons.

     Ultimately, we decided on the button sensor due to cost restrictions and because the varied                  weights of the children would make it difficult to program the sensor.

Brainstorming Spinner Sensors

1. Color Sensor: It would be able to tell if the spinner was on red or blue.
2. Light Sensor: Since blue is a much darker color than red, the light sensor could tell a difference when it landed on red or blue

Further Steps

Our next steps are to observe group time and to go over our ideas with the director at the CSC and hear her input as well as asking some questions.