Date: Saturday, May 19th
Time: 10am-5pm

Location:
University of Maryland, College Park
2117 Hornbake Library, South Wing 
2nd floor (aka. the Human-Computer Interaction Lab)

Eligibility Requirements:

• Children must be between 9-11 years old
• Parents must sign consent form before participation (form will be emailed to interested parents)

Contact:
Leyla Norooz
leylan@umd.edu

Purpose:
Our team at the University of Maryland, College Park focuses on designing wearable technologies, and learning activities around those technologies, to help engage children in new science and engineering learning experiences. Previously our work on BodyVis (see top image) and SharedPhys  has explored how children may better understand anatomy and physiology concepts by exploring with custom-designed wearable on-body sensing and visualization. These tools sense the user's heart and breathing rate and visualize them in real time to assist children in learning about their bodies. We are exploring how children's understandings of anatomy and physiology may change when they are the designers of these technologies. Simultaneously, we aim to enhance their understandings of science and engineering practices by allowing children to act as real scientists and engineers.

Workshop Description:
In this workshop, children will first spend several hours conducting science experiments to investigate questions they have about the circulatory system (using a combination of online resources, videos, our custom tools, and physical activities). Then, children will follow engineering procedures to design and build their own wearable technology representations of the circulatory system using our custom modified construction kits (see bottom image). We aim to help children better understand their bodies through this process. We also hope to connect these typically abstract concepts to children's everyday life experiences to help them understand the significance of anatomy/physiology and science/engineering. Please email Leyla Norooz, leylan@umd.edu, if you or someone you know may be interested in participating in this study, or if you have additional questions about this research.