Use Technology to Solve a Local Problem

Background Information for Teachers

This section contains a quick review for teachers of the science and concepts covered in this lesson.

Global Problem Solvers: The Series pits a group of teenagers against some tough real-world engineering challenges. You can use this video series to help frame engineering problems for your students and show how engineers can have real-world impact and help people. These two videos show trailers for the first and second seasons of the show:

The first two seasons address problems like unreliable village water supplies in Malawi and students' need for a place to attend school after a hurricane in the United States. These are the types of challenges that real engineers tackle to help improve people's lives and make the world a better place. The Global Problem Solvers use a process called social entrepreneurship to tackle problems. You can read more about the teen Global Problem Solvers, their "superpowers," and their problem-solving process in 5 Reasons Global Problem Solvers: The Series Will Inspire STEM Interest in Your Students. Global Problem Solvers: The Series is based on a 7-step process of social entrepreneurship. This process is similar, but not identical, to the engineering design process that you may already be familiar with. The worksheet provided for students in this lesson is tailored to fit this specific project and adds the business aspects of social entrepreneurship to the engineering design process.

In this project, your students will be challenged to identify a real-world problem in their own community, and propose a solution to that problem using technology. Depending on where you live, the problems your students identify could vary quite a bit. Here are just a few examples of problems social entrepreneurs have tackled using technology:

• Students designed a GPS-enabled dog collar to allow people to track their lost pets.
• An app that notifies volunteers at local food banks when people have extra fruits and vegetables from their gardens and trees, so the food does not go to waste.
• Wearable equipment can monitor when an elderly person falls and automatically call for help.
• Drones can fly over fields and take pictures to help farmers figure out which parts of their crops might need more water or fertilizer.

Many of these solutions involve sending data over the internet, sometimes from a device that isn't a computer (like a dog collar). These devices make up the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. Advances in technology have made IoT devices cheaper and easier to build. Many household electronic devices (like thermostats, garage door openers, and even refrigerators) are now IoT-enabled. Some of the devices also use electronic sensors. Electronic sensors can gather measurements of the physical world and store this information on a computer or send it over the internet. There are many different types of electronic sensors. Since your students might not be familiar with the Internet of Things and electronic sensors, we have provided a handout you can give them to help them brainstorm.

Your students might be able to readily identify problems in their community, especially if they are highly visible (like littering). If they have trouble, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals could be a good source of inspiration. They include things like ending poverty, providing food security for everyone on Earth, transitioning to sustainable and renewable energy. While these are global problems, they affect many communities on a local scale.

Additional Background Links

• Global Problem Solvers: The Series, Cisco
• Engineering Design Process, Science Buddies
• Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations

Here are all seven episodes of the first season of Global Problem Solvers: The Series:

Here are all seven episodes of the second season of Global Problem Solvers: The Series:

Prep Work (10 minutes)

• Print student worksheets and handouts.
• Consider assigning the videos below as homework in any LMS.

Engage (1 hour)

If you haven't already done one of our other two lesson plans based on Global Problem Solvers: The Series, have your students watch one or more seasons. This can be done as a class or assigned as homework. Each season consists of seven episodes, each 3–5 minutes long. You can start watching online on the series website or individual episodes from Season One and Season Two.

Now, connect what they saw in the show to their own experiences and community. Ask students about social problems that they have seen first-hand, or read about/seen on TV or online. Emphasize that this project is about social problems, meaning they affect the well-being of a group of people or a community, not individual problems. First, they can list their own ideas on their student worksheets, then you can discuss as a class.

Explain that your students will be designing a solution, but not building a "real" version for this project. This means they don't need to worry if they don't know how to program or work with electronics. For example, they could build a mockup of an electronic device using craft materials, or draw pictures showing what the interface would look like for a smartphone app.

Explore (6 hours)

Break your students into teams of 3–4. Global Problem Solvers: The Series is based on a seven step social entrepreneurship process which incorporates the key elements of the engineering design process. Guide your students through these processes as they work on the project. They can use the student worksheet as a guide and place to document their progress. Note that these processes are iterative: you might go back and forth between steps and do some steps more than once. This is OK!

1. Define the problem. In many engineering lessons, you might define the problem for your students (e.g. challenge them to build something like a catapult or a balloon-powered car). In this lesson, each group of students gets to decide what problem they want to work on. They can use the list of problems the entire class came up with as a starting point, and they will need to agree on a single problem for their group to tackle. If your students need more help finding a social problem to solve, you can provide some suggestions:
   1. Read or watch local news sources.
   2. Talk to trusted adults in the community like parents, teachers, elected officials, or police officers.
   3. Make firsthand observations at locations in the community. This could be as simple as looking out the window on their bus ride to school and noting what they see.
   4. Look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a list of problems that affect people all over the world, and think about whether any of those problems affect your community.
2. Do background research. This step can be done in class or assigned as homework.
   1. Your students should do research about their chosen problem. How widespread is the problem? What causes it? Who does it affect? Are there any existing solutions to the problem?
   2. Your students should also do research about technology that could help solve their problem. Are there any existing solutions that use technology? What technologies are available that could help? The Electronic Sensors and the Internet of Things handout is a good starting point.
3. Design a solution. After defining their problem and doing background research about it, students should design a solution to their problem that uses technology. Students can brainstorm ideas individually first, then discuss all of their ideas as a group and choose the best solution (which may be a combination of, or based on, several of their individual ideas).
4. (Optional) Build a model. You can ask students to build a mockup of their design, for example, a decorated cardboard box to represent a GPS receiver, or a poster with different drawings representing the different screens in a smartphone app. The goal is for each group to create a physical or on-paper model to use to help explain their solution.
5. Make a business plan. Ask each group to come up with a business plan, inspired by what they saw in Global Problem Solvers: The Series. This plan could include an explanation of who the customer is for their design, and how they will convince people to use it.
6. Communicate results. Each group should prepare a brief 3-5 minute presentation about their design for the rest of the class. The presentation should explain the problem they chose to solve, and how their design uses technology to solve the problem. If students made a model it should be used during the presentation.

Reflect (1 hour)

1. Let each group give their presentation to the class. Allow other students a chance to ask a few questions after each presentation.
2. Optionally, you can give awards in different categories, such as:
   • Most creative idea
   • Best business plan/sales pitch

Assess

• Each student's contribution can be evaluated using the student worksheet as well as the group's presentation.

Lesson Plan Variations

For an advanced project, have your students build a functioning prototype of their design. Tutorials on many electronic sensors and IoT devices are available from SparkFun Electronics. Software like MIT App Inventor allows students to design and program smartphone apps.