EdBoard: an educational breadboard

Breadboards are a common tool for designing, prototyping, and testing electronics; however, their black-box design and fine-motor-skill requirements make them difficult for children to use. While there are a variety of breadboard alternatives, we see the need for a platform that prepares children to use a traditional breadboard. In this paper, we discuss the design of EdBoard, a platform with a transparent design and magnetic connections that not only teaches circuitry principles but also works as glass-box scaffolding to prepare children to create circuitry with traditional breadboards. We then discuss our comparative study, which evaluates EdBoards and breadboards as learning tools for children. This is assessed through activity-completion time, the fine-motor-skill difficulties, and the confusion about the tools' functionalities.