Social Experiments
How Effective Are FLY Charms?
In order to test this question, a series of social experiments over a variety of ages are used. The first social experiment deals with the stress factor in high school freshmen induced by a surprise exam. The second experiment determines how FLY Charms can affect behavior in mixed grade level high school classes. The last experiment deals with sixth and seventh graders at Fairfield Woods Middle School. Through the completion of these experiments we hope that we can learn the positive and negative effects of FLY Charms, in addition to gaining knowledge of what to improve upon in our product.
Social Experiment #1
What Materials Do We Need?
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What Information is in the Exam?
Information is based off of the material in the given classroom and is a mix of easy and hard questions as well as of multiple choice and open ended. The exams are identical for both classes and the experiment is kept secret from the students. After the exam and the students' vitals are taken, they will be informed of the experiment and are asked if they would like to be excluded from the results.
How Will We Do This Experiment?
The procedure is as followed:
1) Take a baseline of vitals from a randomly selected group of students, along with a survey a random group of students’ mood.
2) Provide half of the students in the test class with a FLY Charm to have for the day.
3) Have teachers go about the lesson plan without change.
4) Have the teacher give the surprise exam to the class.
5) Directly after the exam is taken, recheck the vitals of the same random group of students in the test class.
6) Observe and record an average mood and vital line. Inform students of their participation in the anonymous study and ask if any want their results excluded.
7) Grade each exam in order to observe and record a class average in both the students who had charms vs. those who didn’t.
8) Take the results from the pre and post exam vitals and mood survey along with the exam grade to determine if there is a noticeable difference.
Why Do This Particular Experiment?
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Summary of Test Results
The data is in! On average, the students given Fly Charms in the data from both of the freshman biology classes scored 16% higher than their peers who did not have the charms! In the first class, the student no charm average was 31% with the students with FLY Charms having an average of 45.5%, which is a 14.5% increase. The second of the classes boasted an even higher difference than this, coming out with the no charm average as 33.5% and the FLY Charm average as aprx. 51%, producing a 17.5% increase. These results are conducive not only to the charms ability to improve focus, but to their ability to reduce rates of recall failure, the psychological term for the "tip of your tongue" phenomenon induced when the mind is stressed to remember previously learned information.
MacLeod no charm |
MacLeod with charm |
Bell no charm |
Bell with charm |
Spreadsheet of raw scores
Social Experiment #2
What Materials do We Need?
- Mixed grade class; Mrs. Turner's Ecology Class
- Note sheet
- FLY Charms
How Will We Do the Experiment?
The procedure is as followed:
1) Create note sheet for Mrs.Turner
2) Give Mrs.Turner note sheet and give her two days to comment on her class’s normal state
3) For the following the three days give Mrs.Turner a box of FLY charms of mixed types and models
4) Each day for 8 school days Mrs. Turner will give her class FLY charms to fidget with during the entirety of their class
5) During and after each class Mrs.Turner will use the aforementioned note sheet to comment on how her class acts with fly charms whether better, worse, or no change
6) Each day she will sign off on her comments to give us permission to use her testimony in our presentation
7) Several of the days our camera woman may go into her room and take videos or pictures of FLY charms in action
8) On the final day of the experiment Mrs.Turner will select several students who she feels had the most change (either positive or negative).
9) Following the 2 work weeks the charms will be collected and Mrs.Turner will give us a final report as to the effectiveness of the charms on her (established) rowdy and uncooperative class.
Why Do This Particular Experiment?
What we saw after we did our first experiment is that it only focused on the students and how they felt. We wanted to do for our second experiment is have a teacher give her input on how she felt the charms worked. This is designed to address one of the major problems we have noticed with the fidget devices that are currently on the market, being that they are distracting themselves. She came to us when she heard about what we were doing and told us that her class often gets distracted. So, for our experiment we are going to give the students our fly charms and have the teacher report on how they are doing on a daily basis. Having the teacher respond back on how their students are doing is beneficial to us because we are predominantly marketing these charms towards students, and if a teacher can see a notable change in their student's behavior then we know that we are on the right path with our charms. The data for this experiment will be added upon completion of the experiment.
Results:
According to Mrs. Turner the charms were a success in helping her class. One of her happiest comments was that after the charms were given she noticed a vast decrease in cell phone usage during class time. She also noted that the phone use she did notice was for class purposes such as research. As well the teacher noted that students began taking notes twice as often once the charms were introduced as well discussions stayed on topic and less students got out of their seats during work times. The students comments reveal that they preferred our rolling charms to the others as well they appreciated the small size as it was less distracting. This data leads to the conclusion that along with memory our charms are also a useful therapy for attention disorders and problems. The decrease in cell phone use coupled with the decrease in students getting up displays that using the charms is a useful alternative to keep students engaged in class. Coupled with the increase in work seen the FLY charms represent an upgrade to typical stim devices
Social Experiment #3
Fairfield Woods Middle School Fidget/Spinner Crisis
Why this experiment?
This experiment was a rare opportunity to introduce FLY Charms into an environment where the other fidget toys had been a real problem. Compared to our previous experiments, where simply focus and grades were the data we were searching for, this one provided a unique comparison from a teachers point of view. At the middle school where this experiment was conducted teachers had been banning the fidget spinners and cubes on a classroom-by-classroom basis, but said that the dean of students had had it up to his head with the craze and was ready to implement a school wide ban. when we went in to interview the teachers on their thoughts, they said that they believed that the students were distracted by them for 2 major reasons: the first of these was that they made too much noise and required both hands to use, causing the student to need to pay attention to it in order to effectively use it; the second being that the students (and the students surrounding) viewed them not as something to focus them, but as a novelty or toy.
What was the outcome?
After leaving the Charms with a group of the Middle School teacher for a week, the teachers said that the implementation of FLY Charms had a resoundingly positive effect. On the first day, of course, their classes were entranced by them due to their newness and the students natural curiosity. After that however, they began to notice a decline in the use of other fidget toys and an increase in student focus. On top of this, they said that the biggest attention change was not in the student given the charm, but rather in those around them. This is especially good news because it means that the change to a more subtle, discreet method to fidget using our charms solved one of the biggest problems presented by the fidget toys currently growing in popularity.
Sidenote: When we went back to retrieve the charms, we got back only 9 charms. This was them followed up by 3 more charms delivered by a sibling attending the school. The kicker? We dropped off 23 charms to the school, a whole class set. If anything this brings more joy than sadness, as clearly the students loved the charms enough to keep them.
Sidenote: When we went back to retrieve the charms, we got back only 9 charms. This was them followed up by 3 more charms delivered by a sibling attending the school. The kicker? We dropped off 23 charms to the school, a whole class set. If anything this brings more joy than sadness, as clearly the students loved the charms enough to keep them.
Extraction of Essential Oils
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What Essential Oils are we Extracting?
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