Shirt Circuit
2015
Essentially a soft breadboard with simple DIY circuit components, shirt Circuit delivers its content through three layers. Firstly, the hand crafted physical components exposes young children to making techniques and material properties. All the parts are crafted from simple off-the-shelf products, like felt, copper tape, snap fits, and conductive thread. Secondly, through rearranging the components on the breadboard, educators can teach children about electricity and circuits. Thirdly, different arrangements afford different programming concepts; educators can use different circuits to teach conditionals, loops, variables etc.
Shirt circuit challenges the "black box" paradigm in which we deliver STEM education. Rather than learning abstract syntax and programming concepts on the computer, we propose that children learn computing and electronics by embodying the idea of a computer or microcontroller.
In collaboration with Manasvi Lalwani
︎︎ Popular Science
︎︎ Instructables
