Made in Collaboration with Clement Zheng
Overview
Shirt Circuit is soft wearable breadboard with modular DIY circuit components that can be snapped onto the shirt by the wearer. The motivation behind shirt circuit is to challenge the ‘black box’ paradigm in which STEM education is often delivered. This is done through making and playing:
Making
Shirt circuit comprises of DIY components that children can build collaboratively with the help of their parents, teachers or even other peers. We have broken the making process down into small steps, as well as provided templates that can be printed and used as a guide.
Playing
Rather than learning abstract syntax and programming concepts on the computer, we propose that children learn computing and electronics by embodying a micro-controller. In our exploration we combine computational thinking with qualities of play. The idea is for the child to get in character of a micro-controller and perform various logical actions, such as a conditional if-then task in a ‘Simon says’ manner. The wearable breadboard helps support the narrative which the game master builds, where a child can personify a micro-controller and ‘execute’’ tasks.
