Learning About Children, a 10th grade class here at BAHS, ends the year with a project that lets students take home life-like electronic babies.
The program is called the “Baby Think It Over™” program by Realityworks; it lets students learn the amount of responsibility that goes into being a parent. The electronic babies are modeled after real infants’ feeding, burping, rocking, and diapering schedules. The babies are different sexes, ethnicities, and rotate on their own personal schedules.
Each student takes a baby home for one day; the baby turns on at 3 P.M. and will stay active until 7 A.M. Some of the babies can wake up every two hours throughout the night. When the baby begins to cry, the students have up to three minutes to figure out what the baby needs, or the wireless system inside the baby will mark down that the student didn’t complete the action the baby needed. Students wear a bracelet that they must swipe across the baby’s sensor before they try to figure out what it needs. The sensors can feel if the baby is being mishandled or abused; if the wireless system detects any abuse, the student/parent will lose points and or possibly receive a zero for the assignment. When the baby is turned in the next morning, your score is printed out immediately along with a count of how many times the student/parent completed a task over how many times the student/parent was supposed to complete that task.
Mrs. Kissel, a Learning About Children teacher, explained the project. “It really gets students to think about how much work it takes to be a parent. I mean, it’s a 24 hour job, 7 days a week.”
The company that designs the babies, Realityworks, develops interactive and educational simulations that improve and enhance social, emotional, and physical health. Their simulation technology has been used all over the world for over 18 years. Their website states that one of their goals is, “to help educators show the probable outcomes of behaviors and choices.” This is achieved through their interactive technology.
The students only have the baby for a short 13 hours, but many are exhausted at school the next day. They realize that, as a parent, someone can quickly become sleep deprived and have to be careful about even simple things like showering, because you can’t predict when the baby will need you.
There have been situations where students’ babies have been mistaken for actual newborns. Students have been pulled over by the police before because they placed the baby in the car seat in the passenger seat of the car.
The project teaches responsibility and shows how a child can change a life, especially the life of a student.