Last month, we had the amazing opportunity to participate in the 2019 Innovation Awards Hackathon at Teachers College! As part of TC's Academic Festival, the INA Hackathon is a purposeful exercise in combining technology and design thinking to improve education. This year's focus is "Play as a pathway for all to flourish in STEM" - perfect!
I teamed up with my colleague Tuan Nguyen, my partner and music educator/consultant Michael Sobolak and educational game designer Caroline Moore. Michael's experience this year building and teaching with musical instruments has been incredible (having been featured a few times on the Arduino page and Hackaday for his inventions, it was great to have him on board!)
The idea of "diversity through play" seems incredibly open-ended, but as we discussed our approach we came to a more concrete idea of "play" itself. Does this mean experimentation without purpose, or enjoyable interaction, or something in between? We took some guidance from Seymour Papert's term "hard fun" as a guidepost for the purpose of play. With this definition in mind, we decided to tackle relevancy and diversity in music education. Evidence points to shrinking music programs, but everyone has music in their lives - the problem is how to open up the definition of "academic" music beyond the typical orchestra/band experience.
Our solution is a small, digital instrument that costs less than $50 to build which allows for collaborative, culturally-relevant play in the music classroom. Temporarily called the JamQ, it is an instrument that acts like a blank canvas for students to play. The primary kit is based around an Arduino Teensy that reads inputs from a variety of sensors, then plays these inputs as MIDI signals through software like Ableton Live. These pics show a glimpse of our process, from first design to testable prototype.
Thanks to Michael's hard work at the laser cutter and marathon soldering sessions, we were able to construct a rudimentary prototype that actually worked in demonstration! The prototype had two inputs each of arcade buttons, pressure sensors, touch sensors and photoresistors that react to lasers (obviously TOO COOL). If you scroll through our presentation below, you can witness a demonstration of the prototype near the end!
Our design also addresses a need for cost-effective technology specifically tailored for the music classroom. In our personal interviews, music teachers expressed that products such as the Makey Makey and Scratch lack the finesse needed for true musicality. As an inherent part of our design, we have prioritized the students’ ability to “plug and play”, allowing them to improvise, explore and play as with any other authentic musical instrument.
Even though we put an immense amount of thought and energy into the project, we were still utterly surprised to win both the 2019 INA Award and People's Choice Award! It was incredibly humbling and gratifying to know how much our message and our work is appreciated by the faculty, judges and visitors to the exhibit. There were some amazing projects designed by other groups this year, and they all addressed such an incredible need. The STEM field is gobbling up funding left and right, and I'm excited to become a full-time teacher in the industry next year! But it's imperative that we consider the equitable access of this growth -- who is benefitting the most from STEM, and how can we open doors for everyone to come in? Play is such a universal mode of learning, and it was a pleasure to create something so meaningful. Moving forward, we'll be taking these ideas and reforming, rethinking, and retooling them for more great hackathons in the future!
Comments