Inspiration
An extremely important right of passage for US teens grades 7th through 9th is sex education. Many districts around the country teach sex ed using different approaches, with whatever resources they have available being a major factor in determining their approach. One of our team members was given a RealCare animatronic baby to take care of for 24 hours in their 8th grade science class. While this is a hands on way to teach students about the important responsibility that comes along with having a child, it is not an opportunity that can be afforded by many schools. Thus, we aimed to create a mobile app that broadened access to the technology of the infant care simulator while creating a more holistic approach to sex ed. Through our mobile application, districts and teachers would be able to incorporate KASEY as an assignment within their current sexual education and health curriculum.
What it does
KASEY is envisioned to serve as a graded assignment within a class. Within an assigned period of time, the teacher can monitor the students responses(particularly the amount of time it takes to respond) to the randomly generated cries. In addition to responding to the cries with the four commands(feeding, diaper change, burping, and rocking) students are instructed to answer a multiple choice question. These questions serve to further educated the students about consent, contraception, STIs/STDs/HIV/AIDS, and healthy relationships. Another important aspect of KASEY is its inclusivity. We purposely made the infant in the app gender neutral. Each infant is named KASEY and each student is assigned a randomly generated race of infant. On top of that, the multiple choice questions are created to educate and include all genders and sexes, especially LGBTQ communities.
How we built it
We built our demo using HTML and CSS from scratch and hosted our app on github. In order to view our app on our iphones, we used the application 'Cordova Browser'. For our graphics we used Adobe Illustrator CC on a MacBook and a Surface tablet. All graphics were also made from scratch.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into many technical challenges as first timers. We overcame many of those problems by working cohesivly as a unit in addition to asking for guidnace from other hackers and sponsers.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are all very proud that we are first time hackers and were able to complete a demo of our project.
What we learned
We learned that it is not always going to go as planned, but making quick yet informed decisions can pay off in the long run.
What's next for KASEY
We hope to see this as a viable option for sexual education in middle and high schools. We believe that sexual education in the United States needs to take some big steps forward in order to create educated and safe students.
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