TL;DR: Raspberry Pi kits arrived. This design has ethical, societal, environmental, and practical use considerations. Feedback welcome.
News: The Raspberry Pi 2 kits have arrived and I am floored by the generosity of element14, Adafruit, and MathWorks for supplying us with such considerable capability as is contained in these amazing packages. Thank you!
In this post, my interest is in discussing the constraints and considerations which must be brought to mind during the initial phases and throughout this project.
To reiterate, the problem asks us to make the teacher aware of out-of-seat students.
Problem Statement
Develop an inconspicuous device and process, what will collect information concerning the number of students seated, record such information for further use, and posit an alert to the teacher when this information changes. The developed system must be affordable, self-contained, require little-to-no setup, and minimum configuration.
While solving this problem, there are many additional constraints to keep in mind (in no particular order):
Ethical Considerations
— Privacy
— The solution must work without logging any imagery of the students, anonymously or not.
— Further, even though students are not being watched, they also shouldn’t perceive such a threat exists.
Societal Implications
— Cost
— Although this is a prototype, production versions must be affordable by any district budget.
— The device must be self-contained; it cannot rely on a network or classroom computer.
Environmental Impact
— Lifespan
— These devices should serve a useful period of much longer than one school year.
— Durability
— Once it is identified, students will surely strike it with pencils, pens, and spitballs.
Target User
— Any Teacher
— 18 to 72 years old, a fresh intern or substituting retiree
— Requires no training, other than to be made aware of it.
Have I overlooked something certain to become a design flaw?
Please, comment below; I am always appreciative of constructive feedback.
Thank you,
Spencer
Tags: "teachers_pet" "attendance_automator" "raspberry_pi" "adafruit" "mathworks" "MATLAB" "ASU"