Future City STEM Project
If you are looking for STEM activities for social studies, this project focuses on urbanization, the environment and sustainability. This inquiry project asks students to research a city’s infrastructure from an engineering perspective and look at how they can make 1 piece of infrastructure more sustainable. Students lead in this social studies STEM project.
ROADMAP
Stage 1 - Launch
Explore various issues in your city that stem from rapid urbanization. Use your peers to bounce ideas off one another and share resoures. Choose an issue that is meaningful to you and explain why.
Brainstorm issues in your community. Share a mind-map. What issues in our city stem from rapid development? Gather any necessary background information.
Choose 3 issues to do a deeper dive. Share a list of wonderings around each issue and any resources that you found helpful.
Share a 30-second video outlining the issue you chose to focus your city design on. Why did you choose this issue? How is it important to you?
Stage 2 - Empathize
Before you build anything, you need a purpose. Who or what are you designing something for? Explore challenges or opportunities within a community (classroom, school, city, global). Learn about your target audience or end-users.
Assemble a focus group. Who is affected by this issue? Eg. Age, occupation etc. Share these contacts with the class.
Interview, survey or observe your group. Collect and organize information. Eg. Feelings, behaviours, actions.
Determine problem statement
Stage 3 - Ideate
Exercise every creative bone you have! Here's where you bend, break, and blend ideas. Generate a lot of ideas and questions to ask to solve the problem or meet needs. Share solutions with others for feedback. Move forward with the most promising solution.
Ideate solutions.
What has already been done?
Storyboard possible solutions.
Test all your ideas on the intended audience/ end user.
Decide on one solution. Do more research.
Determine objectives
Stage 4 - Design & Build
You want to ensure your idea is a solution to a real problem or meets a real need. Think of ways to "mimic" the experience of your end-user so you can test your ideas quickly. Create basic prototypes that improve with every iteration.
Set a goal or purpose.
Determine objectives.
Plan a timeline of to do's.
Create a user story. How would you like the user to interact with the product? This could be a series of sketches or written steps Eg. Step 1: User clicks on "Sign-Up" button, Step 2: User clicks "Create New Map".
Share your simple, cheap model. Use imitation materials or draw the main feature of your product. This is a scaled-down, simple version of your final product so you can “fail fast” and try again. This method is quick, cost-effective but lacks realism. Usually used in the early stages of design process. Eg. Storyboarding, sketching or hand-drawn wireframes.
Stage 5 - Share
Take your prototype and test it with your intended audience or end-user. Get feedback. Make changes based on their feedback. Test again. Repeat this process as many times as you can to improve your product/solution/offering.
Put together a testing plan. Determine objective or question - this is the method you will use to test your prototype. Determine the number of users you’ll test on. Consider: Who will make up the right participants for testing.? What is the criteria for end-user (Eg. age, occupation, skill level). Create a list of all the equipment you'll need to test. How will you document and measure your findings? Do you need a script to use when testing?
Record your findings. What patterns do you see or feedback have you received? How do your users interact with your product? What worked well? What issues need to be fixed? What are your next steps? Make revisions.