This spring, Johns Hopkins PhD students, Kate Fischl, Gaspar Tognetti, Michelle Graham, and John Rattray have worked with Western High school teacher and robotics coach, Heather Romney, and Baltimore’s Key Tech senior electrical engineer, Abbie Shoemaker, to develop and execute a workshop on wearable electronics for 10-15 students at Western High school (the oldest all-girl high school in the US). This workshop assumed no relevant knowledge or prior experience and provided an opportunity for students to learn about electronics, engineering, and computer science in a creative and non-competitive environment outside of the existing Baltimore City robotics programs and competitions. Throughout the 7 week workshop, participating students first learned about electronic current, resistance, and power, followed by soldering skills and basic programming. By the end of the workshop, each student successfully built and programmed her own light-up wearable necklace consisting of an Adafruit FLORA microcontroller and neo-pixel LED ring. The next phase of the workshop will include incorporating microphones and accelerometers into the existing design, enabling the necklace to light up in response to sound and movement.
