What is High Altitude Balloon

In this chapter, the authors describe a new approach for exploring individual participants' engagement in immersive youth maker activities. Participants were outfitted with wearable first-person point-of-view still-image cameras and wrist-based electrodermal sensors. The researchers analyzed the recorded electrodermal data stream for surges in skin conductivity and compared them with the corresponding photographs based on their timestamp. In following with prior work, these surges were interpreted as moments of engagement. A comparison sample was created to look at moments that lacked this psychophysiological marker. Results suggested that the two participants had both shared and divergent engagements with the afterschool program's activities. While the group project of building a high altitude balloon had been established prior to the youth's participation, the girls were able to choose what aspect of the project they wanted to be responsible for. This range of activities provided opportunities for youth to sample a variety of practices typically associated with making.