We're excited to hear about a recently launched Kickstarter campaign for the SpinWheel — a wearable accessory designed to encourage children’s natural curiosity and capacity to engineer a better world.

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Watch the Kickstarter campaign video:

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The SpinWheel is a small programmable, sensor-enabled trinket designed to facilitate student exploration of physics and computer science. It can be worn as jewelry, sported as a keychain, or even programmed to be used as a step counter or compass. It is easy to program, allowing anyone (no prior experience required) to create a unique, science-infused piece of art that they would be proud to wear and call their own.

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The idea for this stylish wearable device originated in 2017 with a group of volunteers who work under the umbrella of Yale's Graduate Society of Engineers. At one of their outreach events, they invited high schoolers to the Yale campus to use breadboards, LED strips, and a motion sensor to create a motion-sensing bracelet.

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The feedback after the event was overwhelmingly positive. The team was especially encouraged when students who hadn’t worked with electronic components before expressed their commitment to keep exploring math and engineering after the event. This confirmed the conviction that building something beautiful can overcome initial fears about STEM concept.

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The team elaborated some more on the mission of the Kickstarter campaign:

As part of the Yale Society of Women Engineers, our outreach team has been running hands-on STEM outreach events for thousands of K12 students over the last few years. To reach more students and fund our non-profit efforts, we have created a wearable electronics kit meant to teach Science and Engineering through an artistic medium. One of our underlying goals is to reach students that would otherwise self-select out of the STEM fields because they find them too dry or difficult. All proceeds from this project will be used to run outreach events.

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More detailed information about the project can be found here. The Kickstarter is already well on its way towards reaching its funding goal and if successful, CircuitHub will be manufacturing the production boards.

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Support STEM outreach for K-12 students  by checking out (and considering backing) the SpinWheel project on Kickstarter!

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