Showcase
Members of each Ideation Group were invited on stage to present one idea their team worked on, describe how the idea developed, display a prepared graphic image of the idea, and pitch their implementation plan to the audience.
In total, eight ideas were presented and are captured here in refined Ideation sketches by our Graphic Facilitators.
Let’s Go Out and Play
A mobile expedition kit for young explorers! Get the kids playing outdoors doors again and have them learn something while they’re at it. The kit includes everything intrepid youngsters need including a digital camera for documenting their journey, specimen kits for collecting bugs and plants, a GPS unit for getting lost and getting found again, writing and drawing materials, and of course it all comes secured in lightweight day pack. Let’s build a lending library of Let’s Go Out and Play packs and make them available for kids who can’t afford such a kit, kids who don’t get outside enough, and kids who need a little extra physical activity.
Playback
Kids can channel their inner Mozart with this musical composition project that involves three simple steps. Step 1: Using simple digital recorders, children record the sounds of their day. The sound of building blocks falling apart, the sound of water being poured in a glass, the sound of birds tweeting on the playground, everything is fair game. Step 2: With the help of their instructors, the kids import their sounds into a large-scale touch screen where they can mix and arrange the sounds into an audio composition. Step 3: After the music has been arranged, the kids all get together and listen to the music that they just created. It’s Playback!
Interactive Comic Book
Story books, comics, cartoons. The only thing children love more than consuming these things is making their own. To help them do just that, Interactive Comic Books pairs younger children with older kids. The youngsters develop characters and story ideas and the older group of teenagers carry the ideas through to publication. The idea is to let the younger children do what comes naturally to them, imagination, and enable the older kids to develop skills involving media production. The younger children benefit from seeing their story come to life and the back-and-forth interaction with potential role models.
Pod Buddy
Pod Buddy is a robotic classroom mascot that interacts with children to encourage emotional awareness, communication abilities, and collaborative decision-making skills. Its color changes based on its mood! It records and plays back songs and stories! Kids can build new features and teach Pod Buddy new routines! It’s Mr. Potato Head for a new generation!
Mobile Play Place
Imagine a vehicle that can deliver unlimited play to a neighborhood near you. That’s the idea behind the Mobile Play Place, a travelling play environment the comes complete with all sorts of materials like building blocks, recycled electronics, cardboard boxes, and other found materials to allow for children to create their own world. Transported from neighborhood to neighborhood in a box truck or even a tractor trailer, the Mobile Play Place provides access to a designated play space in areas that may not have such amenities.
Let’s Try it Out
Kids are so curious and so eager to learn, play, and interact with many things that are not safe enough for kids to experience firsthand. Enter Let’s Try it Out, a project that uses digital entertainment technology to recreate emergency scenarios and other exciting adventures to introduce kids to important, but potentially dangerous, concepts. By using interactive videos, kids learn what to do in case of fires, floods, getting lost from mom and dad, and other harrowing events that we all need to be prepared for.
Mapping Pittsburgh’s Biodiversity Block By Block
Children are nuts for nature and there are few city’s with as many nearby natural settings as Pittsburgh. What better way to engage kids’ thirst for exploration than to lead them on a journey through Pittsburgh’s biodiversity! It starts with children learning about different environmental and climate features. Then, using web-based interactive mapping applications, mentor guides take children to various natural hotspots in the region that replicate those settings. At each spot, they record what they find and identify the environmental features that define the area. Say the kids learn about deserts and then visit the desert plants room at Phipps Conservatory. Or perhaps they learn about forests and then tour Frick Park. And if field trips are out of the question, kids can explore the biodiversity of their own neighborhood and find just as much variety!
Make Your Own Lazer Maze
Physical play? Check. Problem solving? Check. Creativity? Check. All this and a simple application of a familiar technology. Make Your Own Lazer Maze is a kit small lasers, reflectors, and sensors that can be affixed to floors, walls, and ceilings in any room to create a web of laser beams that kids have to navigate without breaking the beam. With no set configuration, time limit, or goals, Make Your Own Lazer Maze can be used countless times without ever repeating the experience. And the best part? It conveniently fits into a small carrying case so kids can make their own Lazer Maze wherever they go!
