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Grade 9 - Tech
What happened in grade 9 Technological Design?
Children's game
Our criteria and constraints:
We were given one hour and limited materials to come up with a children's game that was simple yet fun. We wanted to make sure that the game met many requirements(this was our criteria):
1). The game had to be simple, intuitive and could be easy to pick up but hard to master. This would allow kids to not get frustrated by a complicated game but at the same time be able to continue to enjoy the game for a long time.
2). The game should be able to be played with many people together. This would allow quality bonding between kids and their parents.
3). It had to have no small parts, so balls or pellets were not an option
We also had the following constraints:
1). Time: we only had 1 hour to conceptualize an idea and build it.
2). Materials: Our materials were quite limited, only having access to a paper bag, rubber bands, clothespin hanger, a Popsicle stick, straws and pipe cleaners.
Taking all this into account we decided to build a target game where we shot rubber bands at targets:
The product
All components, and rules
Components-The net
The net consists of three sections each smaller than the last and worth 10 more points. Section one is worth 10 points (biggest), section two is worth 20 (medium) and section three is worth 30 (smallest). The skeleton is made from two straws and 4 pipe cleaners, with the straws as the two poles and the pipe cleaners to divide the different point sections. Behind this, a brown paper bag is placed with the points written on it corresponding to the sections of points.
Components-The sling-shot
Design one:
Design one was two halves of a Popsicle stick held together on two ends of a clothespin hanger. The rubber band would then go around both of these halves. This however, had the problem of being very weak as well as having to use small sticky tack pellets that do not quite fire very far
Design two:
Now instead of firing the sticky talk balls we instead decided to fire the rubber band itself. The new design had the rubber band pulled against a small crevasse of the clothespin. When released the rubber band would fly far, fast. We decided this would be our final sling-shot model.
Components-Net
Conceptual net
Drawing of net
Real net
Children's game: Project
Sling-shot
Conceptual sling-shot
Sling-shot design one
Sling-shot design two
Rules
How do you play the game?
The game is extremely easy to play in fact it is almost instinctive. You as a player use your sling-shot to shoot a rubber band into one of the three scoring zones (the number of points won in the zone is determined based on the size of the zone). If you are playing with other people they will be trying to do the same thing. The first person to 100 points wins! The game can also be played with many variations either making the game harder or easier by adjusting the size of the scoring zone (which is easily done by repositioning the pipe cleaners).
Reflecting-What did I learn?
Reviewing My Work
This taught me a couple of fundamental skills required in any project:
Brainstorming:
This taught me how to quickly and effectively come up with many ideas and document them. This was an important skill for me to learn because I would usually come to a standstill where I have no ideas because I constantly rejected my own ideas, thinking they were bad ideas. This activity; due it's a time constraint, forced me to just pick one of my ideas and go with it.
Keeping in mind target audience:
I often over complicate things and as a result of this, I can not convey my ideas to teammates or colleagues. This activity forced me to think of something simply because the game was designed for kids. If it were complicated, kids would not be able to understand and would get bored; this, in turn, would be a bad product because it will fail to meet it's customers requirements.
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