Friendship bracelets teach teen girls to code

At first glance they may seem like nothing more than pretty plastic accessories, but Jewelbots are a new high-tech way to communicate in today’s mobile world. Targeted at middle-school-aged girls, these technology-enabled bracelets light up when a best friend is near, or buzz to send messages to a pal across the school. 

Jewelbots are a creative way to communicate and to learn how to code.

Designed to get girls interested in coding at a time in their lives when they may lose interest, these programmable plastic flowers are more than just friendship bracelets. Compared to a shiny Apple Watch or a sporty Fitbit, the Jewelbot hardware is primitive: it’s a semi-translucent flower-shaped charm that slides onto an elastic bracelet, and the functionality is basic too. The charms communicate via Bluetooth, independent of Wi-Fi or cell towers, and by using the Jewelbots Android or iOS smartphone app, kids can program their charms to vibrate or light up when their friends are nearby.

To keep things fun, a girl can assign a friend one of eight different colors. When they’re in the same area, both of their charms will light up that color. They can assign other friends to the remaining colors, and if they’re hanging out in a group, all their Jewelbots bangles will burst into a dazzling rainbow flair. Better yet, the charm also doubles as a button that can be used to send haptic messages to friends in a particular color group.

Jewelbots come in a variety of colors. Pictured above is the mint leaf bracelet.

But there’s more to learn if the wearer is curious enough to figure it out, because the smartphone app is meant to be a simple point of entry. By plugging their charms into their computers, girls can use Arduino software to hook up their Jewelbots to just about anything. For example, a user may want hers to glow blue when she gets a new Instagram follower, or she may want it to vibrate when her dog leaves the yard. With more advanced uses such as these, the Jewelbot becomes a personal node linked to the greater world of open-source hardware and software.

Check out the video below to see all that Jewelbots has to offer young minds.

Jewelbots was co-founded by Sara Chipps, Brooke Moreland, and Maria Paula Saba. Chipps is a developer and co-founder of Girl Develop It, a nonprofit that teaches women to code. Moreland is an entrepreneur with experience in high-tech fashion products, and Saba is a graduate of NYU’s ITP program, now studying Bluetooth and Arduino as a post-doc fellow. Before Jewelbots was a product, it was a shared ambition, and together the trio put their heads together to build something that would get teenage girls interested in programming.

Interested in learning more? Visit jewelbots.com. 

Image source: jewelbots.com