Part 2, Beam Project: Objectives & Vision

Final Project, Part 2

As I mentioned in my last post, we were assigned with our beam project! I will reiterate some ideas  from my last post and try to be more detailed about

Objective: To create and encourage a "risky play" environment, where children are able to take risks without inflicting harm on themselves

What Would Our Final Product Look Like?
What did we want our final project to look like? What did we want our beam to do? What did we want the lights on our beam to do? My team and I were plagued with these questions before we could start finalizing materials to buy for the project. We needed to have a reasonable goal (given the time constraint) of what functions we would like to incorporate into our project. Reflecting, the earlier visions of our beam were definitely not reasonable given the time we had to accomplish the task...

Appearance: 
The initial ideas we had for appearances have certainly changed a lot from our final product. We looked online for images of balance beams that would help shape what we wanted.

• The one beam with many inclines! The beam start off relatively short, allowing children of all aptitudes to begin walking on the beam, and become challenging as they walk across different inclines.
• The one beam with many inclines AND...or simply or...heading in different directions! We imagined that our beam could be cut into multiple small ones and connected at the joints, allowing children to change directions and elevations as they moved across the beam.  
• Two beams with levels! What if children can grow with the program we've made? What if we have a child with a high aptitude for walking across the balance beam and finishes in, say, 10 seconds? We could have the beam register "level 2" for the child, and have him/her stepping across beam to beam, as prompted by lights that he/she will see blinking. (A "Follow the Light!" Game)

And as you may guess, many other variations of these ideas. We were played around with the thoughts of making the beam longer/shorter, permitting steps to start the children off, etc. Ultimately, for simplicity, we went with...
The single beam! (With the hope of different levels...) After revisiting the classrooms and discussing with the director of the center, the initial dimensions of our beam were: 3 inches wide by 6 inches tall by 72 inches (6 feet) long. We were also informed that it might be useful to include another "curriculum" to our beam, where children could be asked to "step on the triangle", for instance. Not only would it help encourage risky play, but they could start recognizing shapes and patterns around them!

Programming: 
What did we want the lights/LEDs to do? How did we want our child to step across the beam? What would we need to include for the child to be encouraged to take "risks" on our beam?

• Wouldn't it be cool if we had LEDs on the side of the beam that could show the progress of the children's peer (the one on the beam) to the other children? In different shapes and colors? Or like the progress levels you would see in games, where more experience would fill more of a bar? Not only would they be excited to play on the beam, but also look on as their peers finish the "levels"!
• Could we have lights blinking all the way as they walked across the beam? Or for the LEDs that they've stepped on to remain lit as they walked across the beam, so that they are rewarded for walking across? 
• Different levels with two beams! See above under "Appearances" 

Again, similar to the ideas for the appearance component, my team and I went into many different directions about the programming of our Arduino. Our goal, initially (and finally! after the planning) was to create different levels for children of varying aptitudes.


As we progressed through the stages of building our beam, we added necessary components required by the reality of constructing the final beam, as well as parts of our project that had to be cut by limited time. The details and steps of the building process increased as we had, in our hands, tangible materials to work with.

Small Reflection (After Completion of Final Project): Again, I am glad that we didn't follow through with our initial ambitions. With more time (and a larger budget!), they could be done, but in the end, we had less than 2 weeks to complete a prototype and a final deliverable. Making inclines, levels, or even following the initial dimensions, would have added another layer to the project that we wouldn't have had time to finish.