Technology Inclusion Challenge
+400 Points
The technology industry needs your help! Companies in tech and ed-tech design immersive learning experiences for all ages. However, they are concerned that not all students are benefiting from these technologies. In this Challenge, you’ll address the question: How can we leverage immersive technologies (such as AR,VR,MR, XR) to transform learning experiences for underrepresented and underserved students, including those with visible and invisible disabilities? Come up with a new product or a marketing campaign to address this problem. Create a video pitch for members of the tech industry.
Note: This Challenge is still available to complete to earn points and add to your resumes!! The prize money was awarded in the past to the following winners.
Skills you'll develop
- Problem Solving
- Social Awareness
- Communication
Create
You're ready to CREATE a prototype of your idea. This is what you'll use to explain your brilliant idea to the judges!
Choose ONE of the categories for your solution: product design, business concept, or marketing campaign. You can use the selection checklist to help you choose a category. Check out some examples: A Product Idea, A Unique Business , and A Marketing Campaign.
Create a Marketing Campaign
It's time to get creative and CREATE a prototype of your idea. This is what you'll use to explain your awesome solution!By the end of the Create phase, you should be able to:
Show your Marketing Plan
Explain how you created your prototype(s)
Share your feedback and demonstrate how you revised your prototype(s)
Be ready to create your video pitch
Meet a Professional
Yay! You’re going to create marketing campaign! First, let’s meet a marketing professional.
Successful Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are one of the most popular, effective, and flexible ways to call attention to an issue or problem. An awareness, or advocacy, campaign is an appeal for people to take a specific action in support of a larger goal.
Awareness Campaigns
Awareness campaigns are one of the most popular, effective, and flexible ways to call attention to an issue or problem. An awareness campaign is an appeal for people to take a specific action in support of a larger goal. Awareness campaigns can take many forms -- here are just a few! What will inspire you? Flip the cards.
Ribbons
Ribbons
Red ribbons provide awareness and demonstrate compassion for people living with AIDS. Red was chosen for its "connection to blood and the idea of passion". The red ribbon is an internationally recognized symbol of AIDS awareness and has led to many other awareness ribbons.
Ads
Ads
The World Wildlife Foundation created an ad campaign that makes people think about their paper usage and the impact on trees in South America. The general message is that the survival of the forest depends on even such a small thing like taking a paper towel.
Text Messaging
Text Messaging
Save the Children Action Network contacted voters via text messaging and hand-written postcards to increase voter turnout, educate people on candidate's stances on early learning issues, and advocate for kids. The campaign contacted 270,000 voters (2020).
TikTok
TikTok
#MusicSaves wanted to raise awareness about the importance of music education and the "powerful social, emotional, and cultural benefits" that music education provides. Users created a TikTok video to show how music changed their life. The initiative had over 164.4 million views (2020).
Art & Twitter
Art & Twitter
Change the Ref is an organization devoted to raising awareness about mass shootings, in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. This piece was part of an effort to create large scale public art pieces. It had 115.6 Retweets, 7,010 Quote Tweets, and 456.8K Likes
Challenge
Challenge
The Ice Bucket Challenge was created to promote awareness and raise funds for ALS. It encouraged nominated participants to be filmed having a bucket of ice water poured on their heads and then nominating others. It raised over $220M worldwide for the disease (2014).Your Campaign Plan
In this section, you’ll design your plan for a campaign and any assets that need to be created. As you read through the steps in the slide show, start planning your own campaign. You can use the template in your student KNOtebook.
See an example of a student's campaign plan.
Step 1: Set a Goal
What do you want the world to know? What’s the goal of your campaign?
You can use PRO to set your campaign goals.
Purposeful: What is the purpose of your campaign?
Results: What are the results that you want?
Originality: How will your campaign be different from other campaigns on the same topic?
Step 2: Identify the Audience
Who is your campaign directed at? What do they like? Dislike? How do they make decisions? Who influences them?
When you figure out the people you want to target, it’s helpful to create a target profile to better understand who they are, how they make decisions, and who influences their decisions.
You may wish to refer back to the persona you created in the “Focus” phase of the Challenge.
Step 3: Determine Influencers
Now, consider the people who influence your target audience, such as: close friends, family members, colleagues, peers, social media influencers, etc. These are the people who the target group goes to for advice or to bounce off ideas. Having these people say good things about your campaign will positively influence the target and increase your chances of success.
Step 4: Define the Message
The message is the heart of your campaign; this is what will engage supporters and ultimately reach your goal. You get to be a storyteller. You want to capture people’s hearts and minds so going beyond the facts and creating a dramatic story will likely be impactful. The more your audience can relate to your message, the more likely they are to take action. A campaign message has two parts: the problem and the proposed solution.
Step 5: Identify the Action/Strategy
You know what you want to say and who you will say it to, but how will you say it? What are your campaign strategies? Will you do a one-time tik tok campaign and hope it goes viral? Will you create digital ads for a variety of social media? Consider what makes the most sense for your message and audience?
Testing & Feedback
Now that you have your first prototype, it's time to share it and get feedback so that you can improve it.
Watch the video to see an example of creating a testing plan to get feedback.
Testing Suggestions
Getting Feedback
Consider using any of the following methods to structure and organize your feedback-gathering process.
Feedback Capture Grid
A feedback grid helps you get feedback in a structured way. You can use it during testing or after to organize feedback. Divide a sheet of paper into four quadrants. Label:
“Likes” for positive feedback
“Criticisms” for negative feedback
“Questions” for questions that participants asked
“Ideas” for ideas that the session sparked
I Like, I Wish, What if..
This method is useful when your participants don’t have much experience with giving constructive feedback. Ask participants to use the three kinds of statements:
“I Like...” statements provide positive feedback.
“I Wish...” statements help to collect negative feedback and constructive criticism.
“What If...” statements enable participants to provide new suggestions.
What do you…
A survey is a great way to get feedback from a lot of people. You can get quantitative feedback (for example, "50 people thought that our prototype...". A few survey tips to keep in mind and more:
Ask close-ended questions (yes/no, or give choices)
Make sure your questions are unbiased
Limit the number of questions
Testing Your Assumptions
What do you want to learn from testing your prototype? What assumptions would you like to test? Assumptions, what you think is true, but don’t yet know to be true, are baked into every idea. Testing prototypes with real people is a great way to check your assumptions and testing early in your process allows you to “learn fast by failing early, often, and cheaply.”
Iterating
After you get feedback, it’s time to make changes to your prototype or prototype another part of your product. Remember, the goal is not for your prototypes to be universally loved. The goal is to get as much feedback as you can to help you make your concept better. Continue to prototype, test, and iterate as much as you can, until you are satisfied with your prototype. This may be a multi-day process and is not to be rushed.
Mentor Moment
Get feedback from a professional who will be judging your project!
Consider how you will test and get feedback from a mentor who may be reviewing your prototype online and giving written feedback. Depending on what you create as prototypes, you could scan, take a photo, or capture video to share and get feedback. You may want to use the “I Like, I Wish, What If...” or the grid method.
Get feedback on your prototype now!
PRO Criteria
Continue to prototype, test, and iterate, as time allows and you feel happy with your final prototype.
Make sure your prototype demonstrates that your idea is:
Purposeful: Addresses the problem
Results: Will have an impact
Original: Is unique from everything that already exists or builds on something in a new way
