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

这个项目需要设计和实现一个低成本的World Maker设备，让学生使用日常物品编写代码、创建游戏关卡和参与其他Maker活动，以确保所有年轻人都能培养创新的信心。该系统使用现代技术来避免数字屏幕。在整个过程中，学习者利用他们的自然倾向在非数字世界中创造和塑造想法，并发展在技术媒介中流利地构建新想法的能力。世界制造商(WM)设备的商业化将解决两个全国性的重要问题。首先，通过逐步将年轻学习者的想法变成现实来支撑他们，WM将培养创造性信心：自然地提出想法的能力和采取行动的勇气。接下来，美国在创新和创业方面存在性别差距。女性的专利率是男性的40%，只有9%的信息技术相关专利有一名或多名女性发明者，旨在将创新商业化的孵化器的受益者中只有8%是女性。WM将解决制造者社区(目前80%为男性)的性别平等问题，并拓宽参与制造的途径。必须解决的关键技术挑战包括：1)确保系统能够以低价格点制造；2)工业设计挑战；创造一种便携且不易损坏的设备；3)开发支持WM总体目标的应用程序；4)进一步定义和完善教师/家长将发现具有教育吸引力且孩子们喜欢玩的用户体验。

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.