Digital Clocks As Puzzles

Industrial Designer Dave Rollins from San Jose, California has created a line of offline digital clocks that resemble Online Clock…in a good way.

These clocks come in various styles and colors but all boast a digital numeral display that needs to be assembled by hand, just like puzzles.

In this way, these aren’t really clocks at all, but instead they’re signs and learning aids.

The clock of this kind that most strikingly resembles our online alarm clock is the Digits Clock:

The Digits Clock is 19 inches wide and 7 inches high, so it’s actually pretty large in size.

In this next photo you can see what the Digits Clock has apparently been designed for: it’s supposed to be a teaching aid to help youngsters learn about clocks, time and how to tell the time using digital clocks. They learn about these subjects by recreating the time of the day themselves by putting together the pieces that make up the digital numerals of the clock.

By putting together the bits and pieces that construct the digital clock display, they learn how to tell the time from a digital clock:

Did you know that OnlineClock.net is also frequently used in classrooms around the world as a teaching aid?

We often get emails from teachers who tell us that they use our online alarm clocks in their classrooms to teach youngsters about the subjects of clocks and time. Teachers and college professors also tell us that they like to project our clocks onto their classroom walls, using them to time tests and exams.

Thank you, teachers everywhere, for using our online alarm clocks – we’re very proud that you find our clocks useful in this way!

Surprisingly, while researching this subject and these great-looking clocks from Dave Rollins, we’ve found quite a few negative reviews of the Digits Clock. True, it has a price tag of about $100, and several reviewers have mentioned that this seems to be a steep price tag for something that doesn’t even tell the time.

But they seem to be missing the point about these clocks. These are obviously meant to be art works and teaching aids and not actual working clocks, and if $100 can be used to help several classes of kids better learn how to tell the time, then I think these products are very valuable.

One also has to keep in mind the fact that these digital clock products are probably being produced in very limited quantities, which unfortunately always serves to increase production costs.

Other clocks in the line of digital clock products from Dave Rollins serve other purposes.

These include the following:

1. Striking desk calendars showing the month of the year and day of the month
2. Digital clock signs designed for shop windows showing ‘Be Back at xx:xx’ Time, for when a shop is temporarily closed
3. Teaching aids, as previously mentioned
4. They’re all available in different color combinations and they look so great that they’d conceivably just look cool sitting on one of your shelves simply as works of art or as conversation pieces

More information on these interesting non-online clocks can be found on Mr. Rollins’ own website UseYourDigits.com.

All of Mr. Rollins’ digital clock products may be purchased online from Ponoko.com.

Tags: clock design, clock designer, clock designs, clock puzzles, clock teaching aids, clocks, dave rollins, digit clock, digital clock products, digital clock puzzle, digital clock puzzles

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