School Fitness Fun

[philshem]

The idea is to build a prototype hardware/software kit that allows students to experiment with GPS trackers, both out in the field and also in the classroom.
The kits can be offered to schools and camps as a 1 day free rental. All activities can be done remotely by the class, and also 100% anonymously.

The goal is to increase student data & tech literacy, as well as support computational thinking, as well as explain some physics like GPS and satellites.

The project is exciting for everyone - it's not only hardware, but also software, data, visualization, and creativity.

The dream is to generate some interest by building a kit prototype during Make Zurich,
then apply for some funding to do it proper. Of course, all software and hardware would be 100% open source.

With this kit, multiple students would wear a GPS tracker and go out to a sports field to complete some tasks.
Tasks can be age dependent and include

• spelling something out with their GPS traces - see the 🦖 below! (can be a team event, to each spell one letter of a word)
• do some walking and running at various speeds, and try to guess which animal they matched (from 🐌 to 🐆)
• your ideas are needed! should be fun and not too competitive

The kit, which can be delivered and returned by mail, may come with:

• Teacher instructions and support
• Handful of GPS sports trackers (light-weight, durable, etc)
• Laptop pre-installed with code to extract data from trackers, Python Jupyter notebooks (or similar), data visualizations ready to go.
• Of course, without a laptop would be better, perhaps with class's own laptop with WebUSB or class tablets and Bluetooth/WLAN. In this case, it would be better to develop mobile apps.

--

full disclosure: I am part of a startup Skunk Sports AG which would benefit from having an open platform sports tracker. Ask me about our business case!