Switch+Adapter+Assignment


 * Switch Adapter Assignment**

This activity was completed in class on Thursday, Nov. 19th with Dr. Hines as part of a 'live' workshop in my class EEX 4763 Technology for Exceptional Students. I worked in a group with Crystal Bunn and Marty Rohleder. Originally, we were going to work with the orange Robot toy that Crystal brought in but we couldn't get the battery compartment to open with all the tools that were there so instead, we took a simple pink hand-held fan from the Dollar Store that was available in class. The fan turned out to be a low-risk product to work with that was cost-friendly but still can easily be used to teach a child with disabilities a functional skill such as flipping a switch on and off to use the product.

Here is the Robot we started to work with before we moved to using the pink hand-held fan instead. You can see the different switches we were experimenting with: a red switch, a silver switch, and a black switch.

We began working by disassembling the battery compartment to see how best to connect the switch. The idea was that, by attaching a larger switch, a child with poor fine motor skills/control might find it easier to use this fan.

Initially, we tried to use a small copper wafer as a means to bypass the battery. Due to the design of our toy (it was small), we eventually opted to simply solder the ends of the radio wire (visible in this photo, laying on the end of the table towards bottom of picture) straight to the battery contact plate to see if it works that way. On the picture above, we were trying to see if the copper wafer would work but it was very tricky!

On the photo above, we were working with the red switch and after trying out the wire connections, wasn't the right match for our toy fan.

Marty Rohleder and Crystal Bunn (groupmates)



After many tries, our black switch and fan works!


 * Here is a Simple Circuit Worksheet in PDF for you to try this project!

Here is a website to try **Making a Switch Adapted Toy!** **"Battery Interrupter" Method**// By Dave Grass //

Family Place in Cyberspace