HOW MIGHT WE SUPPORT YOUNG PEOPLE UNDERSTAND, EVALUATE, AND DESIGN MORE EQUITABLE EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES?
New technologies are showing up in classrooms and living rooms before students have the vocabulary to question them, leaving most tech education focused on adoption rather than power, bias, or consequence. Together with technologists, designers, educators, and students, we asked, how might we help students see themselves as designers and decision-makers for the technologies shaping their world, not just users of them?
THE BIG IDEA
Let's create a learner-centered magazine (big up to Highlights!) that uses analog play and activities to help young people understand, evaluate, and design emerging technologies like voice assistants, gene editing, and machine learning.
PHOTO COURTESY BY PATRICK BEAUDOUIN.
OUR DESIGN APPROACH
Rep| is built on the belief that when everyone is represented in the design of technology, we can create a more just world. That representation starts with giving young people the frameworks to ask better questions. Each issue of Rep| centers one emerging technology and walks students through a shared design lens to interrogate: Data, Technology, Products, Experiences, Systems, and Implications.
Issue 01, Build a Bot, uses voice assistants like Siri and Alexa as an entry point into questions of bias, dominant narratives, and whose voices get represented in big data. Students have the opportunity to create their own lexicons for voice assistants, design their own rules for voice assistants, and remix an artist's work into their own vision of AI. Issue 02 turns the same lens on gene editing, and Issue 03, Constella, is a choose-your-own-adventure game exploring algorithms and data-driven decisions. Every activity is analog by design, so the magazine is accessible without requiring a device, connectivity or a facilitator. An accompanying Educators Guide extends the material into classrooms.
TA-DA! THE OUTCOME
Three issues of Rep| are complete and freely available as digital downloads, alongside print editions on Amazon: Build a Bot, Gene Editing, and Constella. The series was named a finalist for Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards, and continues to be used by children, families, and educators to build the knowledge, critical frameworks, and confidence to shape more equitable technology. Learn more at Rep| Magazine.