Solve a World Problem

Evidence of Work

Description:

In this project we were given the opportunity to choose groups who had the same interest or passion in a world problem. My group decided to focus on a problem that we could fix in our community. We thought about problems that teens faced with a lot in their lives. We finally made the decision to focus on stress in teens due to finals week. We focused mainly on the problem in schools near Marin asking students what stress was like for them.

After we each gathered data and annotated three articles we began to develop a solution to the problem facing countless High Schoolers. We realized that people don't get enough sleep, food, water,rest and break to relax when its the week to prepare for finals. So we decided to create a period called R.E.L.A.X to help students receive all of these things in the middle of the day to help them relive their stress. It is still the same amount of hours in a day and it only takes off about 7 minutes from each class. This period would be only on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays during dead week.

After coming up with the solution my team and I new we had to figure out a way to get this approved by the school. So we decided to talk to Mrs. Warren the vice principal to see what she had in mind. She said that we needed to have all of the teachers and staff approve, go with teachers contract, have Principal agree and make sure the district agreed. After the conversation we implemented her ideas into our presentation and made sure the board would approve.

Content

Engineering Design Cycle:

• Identify Need- Chose a world problem you and your group would like to focus on for the project.

• Research Problem- Research your world problem by having each group member find three valid articles to annotate. Then share research findings. For our world problem we choose to focus on stress in teens due to finals week.

• Develop Possible Solutions- With your team brainstorm as many ideas as possible (good or bad). Set a timer for 3 minutes and write down ideas in between that amount of time.

• Selecting Final Solution- We decided to create another period in the day during dead week to give students the opportunity to help with their stress. This period is called R.E.L.A.X and it was planned on being put in on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

• Build Prototype- Sense you can't solve our problem by building or constructing anything the only prototype we had was making a slideshow and printing out R.E.L.A.X schedules. Our problem was more like a protocol or school structure announcement that included steps.

• Test and evaluate Prototype- Unfortunately we were not able to test out our solution because finals week was already passed when we were given this project. Also we would need more time to get this approved by the entire staff and school board. It takes time to implement things. But we did make a survey in which we asked students what they thought would help them relive their stress.

• Communicate Design- We communicated our design by presenting our slideshow in front of the class. The presentation went very well and we got our idea across.

• Redesign and Repeat- We fixed our project by improving the action steps part of it. We went to Mrs. Warren and received her feedback to help us gain a better understanding of how we could put this into action someday.