SBIR Phase I: Making Makers- Developing Multiple Pathways to Invention through a Low Cost Maker Device

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This project entails the design and implementation of a low cost World Maker device that lets students code, create game levels, and engage in other maker activities using everyday objects to ensure all young people can develop the creative confidence to invent. The system uses modern technology to avoid digital screens. Throughout this experience, learners tap into their natural proclivities to make and shape ideas in the non-digital world, and develop the ability to fluently construct new ideas in a technical medium. The commercialization of the World Maker (WM) device will address two, nationally important issues. First, by scaffolding young learners through progressively bringing their ideas into reality, the WM will foster creative confidence: the natural ability to come up with ideas and the courage to act on them. Next, there is a gender gap in innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States. Women patent at 40% the rate of men, only 9% of information technology related patents have one or more female inventors, and only 8% of the beneficiaries of incubators meant to commercialize innovations were women. The WM will address gender equity issues in the maker community (currently 80% male) and by widening pathways to engage in making. The key technical challenges that must be solved include: 1) ensuring that the system can be manufactured at a low price point, 2) the industrial design challenge; creating a device that is portable and not breakable 3) developing applications that will support the overall goals of the WM, and 4) further defining and refining a user experience that teachers/parents will find educationally compelling and children love playing with.