Week 18 - Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

Assignment:

• Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.

• Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~25 MB) and put them in your website's root directory

Overview

This week, I explore future opportunities for my Final Project, a Wooden Battering Ram Alarm Clock.

Thoughts about my Wooden Battering Ram Alarm Clock

When I first conceptualized the Wooden Battering Ram Alarm Clock, my intentions were simple. I needed to think of something that I would be motivated to finish and showcase as a Fab Academy student. I chose a Battering Ram Alarm Clock because:

1. It would be something interesting challenge to build.

2. It has some novelty to it. While there have been wooden LED alarm clocks and toy battering rams before, I have not seen anyone combining the two ideas before.

From the get-go, I had no intention of commercializing this idea and the thought of selling it does not appeal to me. However, that got me thinking… If I am not planning to make money from this, what else could I possibly do with it? I realized that (when finished), my Wooden Battering Ram Alarm Clock could be valuable as an education and showcasing tool.

Dissemination Plan

As a Fab Lab staff of Singapore Polytechnic, there are many opportunities to share my project internally. There are also opportunities share my project outside of work, such as at the local library or through online learning platforms.

Target Audience	Dissemination Format	How does the plan work?
Library Makerspace Visitors	Showcase at Library Makerspace	The project can be showcased as an exhibit at Singapore Polytechnic’s Library Makerspace, where hundreds of students and visitors pass by on school days. The project can also be showcased as an exhibit during Polytechnic events such as SP Open House.
General Public	Community sharing at the local library	Libraries, especially those with makerspaces, are keen to host programmes to help the community learn about a certain topic. The experience of creating this project can be shared through these programmes. The project can also be showcased as a public library exhibit.
Students	Workshop	Curriculum can be created to help students learn about topics like Digital Fabrication. This project can be used as a teaching tool to show students examples of how certain things might be done.
Online Learners	Learning platforms (e.g. Instructables/YouTube/Fab Academy Page etc)	Online Learners can assess content from learning platforms to learn from this project if they are looking for inspiration or knowledge on how to make similar projects.

I have one other “out-of-the-box” idea to add to the dissemination plan… I present to you the first Battering Ram Alarm Clock competition to promote maker culture and STEM. I will have prizes for:

1. Best Overall Design

2. Best clock design

3. Best ram design

4. Most innovative alarm

5. Maker’s spirit award – For the maker who demonstrates the key qualities of being a maker such as creativity, perseverance and being helpful.

The finale of this competition would be to surround a cardboard castle with all the Battering Ram Alarm Clocks from the competition and smash it to collapse.

Intellectual Property Protection

During this week's lecture, Professor Neil covered a lot of different types of Intellectual Property protection. Since I am not planning to sell my project and am only intending to use it for educational purposes, I look for a suitable Creative Common license (CC) to use.

There are a lot of different CC variants to choose from so I hit Chat GPT with this prompt:

I am about to complete a maker's project that is a wooden battering ram alarm clock. I am not planning to sell it and will largely be using it for educational purposes. What type of Creative Commons license should I use?

ChatGPT’s reply:

Recommended License: CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

This license means:

• Others can remix, adapt, and build upon your project.

• They must credit you.

• They cannot use it commercially.

• They must share any adaptations under the same license. Why this is a good fit:

• It is educational, so you’re encouraging learning and remixing.

• You prevent commercial exploitation of your idea.

• You promote open sharing and collaboration

That sounds about right for what I am intending to do with it. This is my LAST individual assignment for Fab Academy. I am so happy to have completed all 18 weeks. Celebrations will have to wait though – I still have a Final Project to complete.

This concludes this week’s assignment.