Ohio 4-H Youth Development, part of Ohio State University Extension, is excited to present our very own wearable technology… the BioBand! Wearable technologies are electronic fabrics or electronic accessories that are worn. These technologies are new and exciting. We all know of a few of the wearable technologies in the fitness industry such as Fitbit, Nike Fuel, Jawbone, etc. Wearable technologies are forecast to reach 411 million devices by 2020. Wearable technology is heavily marketed towards adults, but children have been getting in on this craze in previous years. These wearable technology companies in the fitness industry have started to cater to children as well. This idea got us excited. Our 4-H-ers are gobbling up the fitness tracker mania as we speak.
Our team thought what could make this better for our 4-H-ers? What could help our kids get more out of this wearable tech craze? We got it. What if we could help kids understand what was actually going on in their fitness tracker? We decided to dive into this project head-on. We wanted to get kids excited not just about the fitness trackers, but the technology and the data that goes into one of them.
Our BioBand kit is compact and very small cost so that kids, parents, and grandparents all have access to buying the kit. We want to make this project accessible to every child. The BioBand kit helps kids encounter and learn from problem-solving activities; it encourages kids to put their budding engineering skills to work as well as encounter new and exciting ideas such as coding. Through BioBands we urge kids to ask the big questions, imagine the possibilities, plan, and then create and improve the future.
Our BioBand kids, after assembling their BioBand will be able to explore why and how tracking their physical activity with the band affects their overall fitness and ultimately how several careers connected to the problem solving encountered throughout the kit.
The project will walk kids through the creation of the BioBands and encourage their imagination to grow while creating a newfound love for the practical STEM. We want to spur a love for engineering and do-it-yourself electronic project for these kids as well as encouraging a love of tinkering and help kids to apply it to a newfound interest in STEM.