Students Across Nation Join Together To Build Wearable Fitness Trackers

On Wednesday, youth around the world will participate in 4‑H National Youth Science Day, the world’s largest hands-on engineering challenge. Schoolchildren will be working together to design, build and refine a wearable fitness tracker that is easy to use and aesthetically appealing.

“Wearable technologies are a great space for youth in education because it really combines a lot of different areas,” Brad Barker, professor of Nebraska Extension 4-H Youth Development, said in a statement. “For instance, you have technology, you have computer programming, circuitry. But then also you have that aesthetic. It’s really personal expression about the artifact that you are creating.”

For the event, in partnership with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, youths will use kits to design and improve fitness trackers. The program will teach kids valuable technological skills such building circuits, integrating sensors, designing a viable product and interpreting health data. Teams at the University were responsible for creating the Incredible Wearables kits. Each kit has enough materials for up to 10 children to create their own wearables and is totally reusable.

“What makes 4‑H NYSD so unique is that it gets tens of thousands of kids excited about studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) on a single day,” Jennifer Sirangelo, president and CEO, National 4‑H Council, said in a statement. “Incredible Wearables is an exhilarating experience that allows young people to roll up their sleeves and create cutting-edge technology, not just use it.”

The partnership is part of 4-H’s ongoing mission to educate students about the opportunities present in STEM fields. Last year, over 100,000 participated in the event across all 50 states and in other countries as well.

“What we know about activities and experiences like 4-H National Youth Science Day is that they can lead young people down a path they hadn’t even thought about before,” said Kathleen Lodl, associate dean of Nebraska Extension and 4-H program administrator. “One of the strengths of the 4-H Program is its hands-on nature. We make sure that young people are really engaged in the learning process, so it’s the learning-by-doing model, and though that makes common sense, it’s not something we always do when we have learning experiences.”