In March 2015, The Oracle Education Foundation (OEF) organized Girls Only: A Wearable Technology Workshop, which taught 22 ninth graders from Design Tech High School in California to design and build working prototypes of wearable technologies using the Adafruit FLORA platform.

Computer science education is especially important to the OEF, and is a focus point of their philanthropic activities. OEF’s Executive Director Colleen Cassity explains:

The Oracle Education Foundation aims to empower students — especially girls — with the creative confidence to engage with today’s technologies, and design tomorrow’s innovations. While inclusive of all, OEF gives special attention to student populations historically underrepresented in STEAM studies and careers, including girls and students of color.

Over the course of the 28-hour workshop, all students gained skills and experience that radically increased their confidence with the technologies we used. Four teams of students applied for and received “extension scholarship” from OEF to take their prototypes to the next level. A month later, they demoed their new and improved prototypes for their class and the Oracle Volunteer coaches.

Read on for the complete case study!

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!