Grants/Open Robotics Platform
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
We are proposing to make a fully Open Robotics learning platform for children, using Arduino and free software projects, like Turtle art. We have now a beta of this and it's called Hypercubo.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
We will be giving PCB's diagrams (for electronic circuits), Tutorials, Wikis, forums and chats, channels of communication to teach and learn how to do things with our Platform. In synthesis we will be giving a complete guide on how to make a KIT for doing robotics for children.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
We are targeting children that cannot access these kind of technologies due to the fact that existent Kits have hight costs for example LEGO and VEX. We are aiming to reach poor children or children that don't have access to Robotics by numerous reasons. In occasions Private schools don't acquire Robotics Kits because they don't integrate it to curriculum, we also expect to integrate a pedagogical resources.br />
I have four years of experience working in open education projects like OLPC and Sugar. We have now possible places of implementation both in Government and in Private sectors. In our country (Colombia) there are not institutions working on open technologies and Education as a main axis of its development or strategies.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
We will be conducting trials on how children improve abilities on solving puzzles in others subjects like mathematics after they use our Robotics Kits to solve automation and Robotics general and simple problems.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We are three people, Working in the technical and pedagogical aspects of a Robotics Kit, this process is already on an Beta stage, this Grant would be to boost it up and been able to finish it, because we are laking resources right now.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
There is not a single open robotics kit for children education in the market, having one would be a start up for many more interesting projects with Robotics and similar Technologies, that can be accessed by all people.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
We will be using Arduino, our own hardware platform called Hypercubo, squeak-etoys, scratch and Turtle Art.
We are software and hardware developers interested in how Technologies impact culture.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
One problem we expect to face is the commercialization and long term economic sustainability, we want this grant to be a start up to our project and be able to commercialize it in our country and probably in Latin America. Other commercial solutions can be also developed with our platform.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
We expect to develop other open hardware products and services related to the kit, due to the fact that this base circuit can be used in commercial solutions. We plane to have an e-commerce implementation in our page and doing similar things as Sparkfun electronics, Adafruit Technologies and so forth.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
By the fact that this is a project that can be accessed for people in all the world and has low costs, and also that can be duplicated (We don not hide anything and by others we expect to have an scalable impacts.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
Nothing, besides the grant and publicity ;).
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
We already communicate on forums, mail lists and chat, we will be also launching an e-commerce solution to be able to reach more countries with our product. We have also twitter accounts, proximately a facebook group and a CMS portal made in Joomla, we also be welcoming people that can provide us with capital for investment in our project.
Legal
Yes
