Bay Area Pilot

On May 29, our lesson plan was delivered to 7th grade students at Marin County Middle School through two one-hour classes of 15 students each. It was the last day of a three day lesson plan that was kicked off by Kassie. Overall the lesson was well received, and I tried to insert as much adjacent application (Lie Detector) and pop culture (Wii Fit) references to maintain the students' attention and explain the phenomena.

I led the day's lesson with the IR prototype and introduced the plethysmograph concept by relating it to childhood curiousity of covering the flashlight with a hand. I also digressed and talked about communications applications for IR. The IR prototype lacked an enclosure, so the readings were susceptible to motion artifacts which was an excellent lead into the the high fidelity ECG approach. While students were hooked up to the ECG circuit, the valsava maneuver was an excellent way to demonstrate the physiological effects. The students were really captivated by the signal activity and were exploring ways to induce a higher heart rate such as embarrassment. Here the lie detector concept hooked the entire class; however, it led to a few inappropriate and personal questions but we're dealing with 7th graders after all =)

Worksheets were used the previous day for the manual pulse-feel exercises. This would be a good idea for the devices introduction if more prototypes and XOs were available for the class. For the day we only had 2 ECG prototypes, 1IR prototype, and 2 XOs which was sufficient for explanation purposes but not enough to allow everyone an opportunity to get hands-on with the devices.

We'll be releasing the IR circuit schematic with a BOM soon for those interested in incorporating some biofeedback into their XO/Sugar applications.

IR Plethysmograph

Plethysmograph is an infrared photoelectric sensor used to record changes in pulsatile blood flow from the finger. The Plethysmograph operates by recording changes in blood volume as the arterial pulse expands and contracts the microvasculature.
This circuit will provide an alternative method to visualize pulse rate for the children and remove the complications of electrode application. An enclosure will be made to help deliver a consistent view of the pulse rate and remove any motion artifacts that might be visible. The ideal enclosure could be as simple as a clothes pin. The following video also demonstrates our latest working beat detection method displaying the heart rate.

Video Demo:

ECG Prototype 2

Jake delivered a new prototype with an enclosure to support our Bay Area deployment. I've checked out the latest hardware and have modified the heart rate method to correctly perform beat detection with a normal/positive QRS waveform.

Bay Area Pilot

Luckily a Marin County Middle School teacher has contacted us to participate in our very first launch of our prototype . Kassie Petrick has graciously offered us her support in the development of a lesson plan incorporating our biomedical prototypes. The lesson plan will begin with a basic introduction to the human body and then lead into a history lesson on the discovery of "vital signs". Afterwards, students will participate in manual exercises of pulse monitoring (via stethoscope and wrist/neck) and then an explanation of "lub-dub" will follow to describe the anatomy of the heart. Finally an electrical perspective of the heart's contraction will provide background for the autonomous methods ECG and Pulse Monitor (Plethysmograph) circuits. The lesson plan will be delivered to Kassie's 7th and 8th grade students and I'll be present to assist as well as monitor the kids' reception of the activity/capability. Hopefully a few students would be interested in pursuing developing a science project/health related project around this peripheral. The XO chapter of the lesson plan will be delivered on May 29th.

Lesson plan to be posted on our Google groups:
http://groups.google.com/group/olpcgoldenstate

ECG Prototype 1

Jake delivered the ECG prototype 1 supported by alternative power sources (9V battery and USB). Leveraging the Measure code with a few tweaks we've fixed sampling at 4 kHz and down-sampled effectively to 500 Hz. With a buffer depth of 1100 samples only ~2 seconds worth of a beat signature is saved thus giving us an unstable beat rate. If we extend the signature to 10 seconds worth we should be able to get more stability, so we'll need to decouple the drawWaveform buffer from the buffer used for beat detection.

Nevertheless, we've delivered the first ECG prototype for the XO which will hopefully serve to gain more interest for the XO's health-related applications.


Our Demo Video

OLPC Case Study

HBS professor John Quelch completes case study on the OLPC platform.
There is also a class scheduled for Spring 2008 addressing the marketing aspects of the campaign.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5813.html

Partnership Kick-off

First Meeting with Phonchan aka "Newey", Director of Youth Venture
Jake and I had a one hour meeting via Skype to gain a better understanding of Youth Venture's project selection cycle, funding limitations, and schools that have established relationships with YV. So here are the details and logistics...

Target Age: 14-24.
Youth Venture provides youth with an initial start-up financial investment (up to 50,000 Baht or ~$1400 USD)
Support in all phases of the development and implementation of their social ventures:

• Outreach/Marketing - Posters/Brochures, PR mass-media campaign and through CSO
• Project Development - Online/Offline supports help youth develop ideas into Venture plans
• Selection Panel - Panelists evaluate Venture plans
• Venture Launch - Teams launch and receive seed funding, orientation, tools and consultancy support
• Capacity Building - Series of workshops offered from marketing to sustainability and project management
• Evaluation/Lesson-Learn - Evaluation and lesson learning workshop offered to help sustain/grow Venture
• Fellowship/Movement - Venture teams are connected through local and global events and the website.

Current project selection phase ends late January 2008.
Chosen theme for 2008 is the Environment, although another general template will be constructed for all other focuses. Newey is interested in a demonstration of our capabilities which is a bit challenging due to our lack of XOs. I'll look into the possibility of DSIL supporting this demo with their XO lot.