ReBuild

Nurturing civically engaged minds for a more equitable tomorrow

The goal of our product ReBuild is to support high school students, especially students in lower-income or underprivileged communities, in recognizing different perspectives in the past and the implications that this has for the present and the future. There is a dominant narrative implicit in school curriculum and our public institutions (museums, monuments, memorials, etc.). ReBuild will surface multiple narratives and contribute to a more complete understanding of the ways we remember and portray the past in public spaces. Students will have the opportunity to walk through public spaces (buildings, neighborhoods, parks, etc.), examine the names/statues/memorials/etc. on display, engage with the narratives that such public structures tell, and have an opportunity to edit the structures on the mobile app to tell a different story.

By modifying existing monuments/statues based on the perspectives that they hope to highlight or the narratives that they feel are currently missing,  there is the potential for students to engage more deeply with the neighborhoods in which they live, or areas and spaces to which they may not have felt a connection before. As a result of engagement with this product, students will be able to critically examine and surface the national narratives and perspectives perpetuated through our educational institutions and urban landscapes. In turn, their analytical and communication skills will grow as their civic agency and engagement develop.

This product emulates a social media platform where students can share their edits and modifications of existing structures. As we continue building out the technology, we intend to add image recognition functionality and augmented reality concepts where students can be physically pointing their smartphone’s camera and adding/editing on the smartphone’s screen in real time. This image recognition and AR technology exists today in social media apps, but we want to add a component of critical reflection that comes with students sharing and discussing their “re-creations”. We also intend to build a matching algorithm where the app would recommend which users on the platform have visited similar sites and/or re-created structures with similar aspects that might produce debatable topics. This matching algorithm could connect users to other users whom they may or may not know of in person. Through this mediated platform, we hope to spark more thoughtful and intellectual conversations around re-creations made by our users about their community and surroundings.

Our project is not only unique, but timely given our current political climate. Our project pushes students to critically analyze the statues and monuments in our public spaces and question the narratives and values that such structures uphold and perpetuate. We are utilizing existing technologies - image recognition, augmented reality and matching algorithm development - to support students in learning about and reimagining their local communities. With a focus on critical analysis, our target users (low-income students of color) will have the agency to affect the structures around them through a mobile application that engages with their space.

Technology is integral to our solution because it gives students the opportunity to virtually brainstorm, edit, and iterate existing structures (monuments, buildings, public spaces, etc.). There are many possible applications for being able to engage with the physical space in this way including: providing thoughtful and tangible proposals to those in positions of power to modify existing structures, educating the community about the physical space and its implications for present and future generations, motivating the public to engage through activism or campaigns to have a greater influence on how public space is utilized, etc.

We will refine a high-fidelity prototype and incorporate all feedback from teachers who have engaged with the product so far. Later, we will outsource the building of the application. We will reach out to our networks to recruit teachers (our target is 4 highly interested teachers). In agreeing to participate in our pilot, teachers would agree to implement the product in their classes during the pilot period. They will use the prototype and attend check-in sessions to give us feedback. Lastly, we will conduct user-testing with their students and conduct focus group interviews for additional user feedback.

Our idea rests on the belief that teaching and learning are transformative tools for social change. In recognizing that education broadly, and civic education, in particular, play a pivotal role in shaping how people engage, we are intentionally operating within participatory paradigms to center low income, youth of color. With these paradigms as a framework and the data from our application to indicate student growth in tangible cognitive skills, our goal is that more young people develop the critical thinking skills they need to engage meaningfully within institutions of power to impact change.

We will reach out to our networks in New York City and the Bay Area of California to recruit teachers (most probably under 10 teachers) who would be willing to support our pilot process. By agreeing to our pilot, teachers will agree to not only implementing the product, but engaging with us throughout the year. We will also contact school leaders within our networks as another point of entry. With the buy-in and support of school leaders, we might receive recommendations for teachers who would be interested, in addition to more institutional support of our product.

We are in the beginning stages of implementing our pilot program. For that reason, we have not yet officially recruited our participants. So far, we have only demonstrated the application through a prototype. With this prototype, we have received detailed feedback from at least 5 teachers with suggestions from 10 designers in education about the product (in addition to faculty mentors). Our current categories for feedback are: function, reflection, curriculum, marketing, design, content, measurement/assessment, and teacher support.

With the goal of four highly interested teachers who teach between 20-30 students, we will be serving roughly 84-124 users. We will be serving them by providing them with the application and the support through in-person trainings, orientation and lesson planning materials, and consistent troubleshooting and feedback cycles. Throughout these feedback cycles, we will be supporting educators and students in building and identifying growth on cognitive skills rubrics to track growth. If we are able to bring on at least 4 newly interested teachers each additional year, we will be serving between 252-374 users (students and teachers) in three years.

We are both doctoral students passionate about leveraging technology for positive social impact in education. Van Anh is a PhD student in Social Studies Education and a former high school teacher. She is in a prime position to lead content development. She also has a wide network of teachers in public schools to tap into, for prototype testing and evaluation. Monica is pursuing her Doctorate of Education (EdD) in Instructional Technology & Media, and has studied engineering. She brings excellent rapid prototyping, design and user experience skills to the team, and stays abreast with current trends in emerging technologies.

ReBuild intends to use a for-profit model (freemium subscription to teachers and students). We aim to finish building the application by late 2018 / early 2019 and onboard 1000 students by the end of 2019 for our larger-scale pilot test.

To scale, we will be working simultaneously in improving and launching new features and more locations (apart from New York City, our starting city). For sustainability, we intend to work closely with the Department of Education, school district administrators, and onboard more schools, teachers and students to use our product and gain profit.

We would love to be part of the Solve community as we know that there are incredible mentors and experts in social impact, education technology and business whom we can leverage. We also see ourselves as active contributors to the community, and look forward to provide peer-to-peer feedback and share skills and resources as we all embark on our projects with similar drive and passion. Monica had an informal opportunity to interact with Solve Conference participants in May 2018 and was very inspired by each individual’s motivation for innovative community development.

Barriers for our solution include software development and infrastructure management. Our plan is to gain funding and support to recruit a full-stack developer to build our mobile platform on iOS and Android. We have currently made high-fidelity prototypes of our product, and the next large step is to build out the product in order to conduct larger-scale testing with our target audience. Additional barriers include the assumption that we have made that high school students will LIKE using this educational app. While we have conducted testing with teachers, we have not yet started testing with their students.