The Solve It Team

A video series for
problem solvers

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Welcome to the Team

The Solve It Team is made up of brilliant minds from around the world – we're glad you're one of them.

What we do: we solve big problems in our communities using technology!


How you join us: Tune in to youtube.com/technovationglobal every Tuesday and Thursday for a new video about choosing a problem to solve and then finding the best way to solve it.

Tell us what you're working on with #SolveItTeam!

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Week One: Finding a problem worth solving

April 14, 2020

You can make a change

Rebecca challenges Mónica, Sergio, and Astrid to Make a Change 

We challenge you to join the #SolveItTeam in our  first episode! We talk to a family in Madrid to see how they identified a problem they wanted to solve.

RESOURCES

April 16, 2020

Problem identification

Tara Challenges you to identify a problem you care about solving

We challenge you to join us in a learning journey! To choose the problem you want to solve, start by thinking about what you care about and what matters to you.

RESOURCES

  • Online tool to make a Venn Diagram (or you can use pen + paper)

From MIT App Inventor

Week One Coding Tutorial

Each week we share a coding tutorial video that walks through how to build a different feature in a mobile app using MIT App Inventor or Thunkable.

Watch Selim from MIT take a big problem – like reducing worldwide hunger – and find a way to break it into pieces that can be addressed by a mobile app.

Don’t forget to share what you make by tagging #SolveItTeam and our social media accounts:
@technovation (twitter)
@technovationglobal (instagram)
@technovationglobal (facebook)



From VAINAI

Week One AI Tutorial

Learn from data scientists & engineers at VAINAI how to use Python & Machine Learning to create a recommendation tool in Google Colaboratory.

Week Two: Building a team – virtually!

April 21, 2020

Learning Virtually

Dea shares tips on leading virtual learning sessions

Student Ambassador and 2019 Technovation Girls 2019 winner Dea joins us from Albania to share tips for leading virtual coding sessions and lessons.

April 23, 2020

Virtual Team Building


Devin and Nick challenge you to build your virtual team

How do you build a team and figure out how to work together when you’re all in different places? Devin and Nick have some tips!

RESOURCES

With Thunkable

Week Two Coding Tutorial

Tara Chklovski (Technovation’s CEO) and Dave Wolber (Professor of Computer Science at University of San Francisco) share some best practices for coding mobile apps using Thunkable, while they build an app that helps you be more mindful, kind and listen more to others.

Week Three: How to build tech people need and want

April 28, 2020

Pivoting an Idea

Grace and Durotimi Discuss Getting User Feedback and How to Pivot an Idea

Technovation Student Ambassadors Grace and Durotimi share their tips about how to approach the research feedback and design improvement cycle.

April 30, 2020

Barriers to User Adoption

How to build tech people need and want with Mike Burshteyn of ideas42

How do we design solutions and products that people will actually use to improve their lives? It starts by understanding how people think. Mike Burshteyn of ideas42 tells us how to figure out why people aren’t using an app or tool, and how to design those tools to guide their behavior.

From MIT App Inventor

Week Three Coding Tutorial

Karen from the MIT App Inventor team walks us through the process of creating a mobile app that helps individuals with diabetes manage their illness and connect with other people who also have diabetes. They walk through the steps to build an app that acts like a community forum.

RESOURCES


Week Four: Understanding Yourself and Overcoming Frustration

May 5, 2020

Overcoming Frustration & Learning how to Persevere

Team Tech Rescue is using tech to tackle kidnapping
[parental guidance advised]

Team Tech Rescue shares their tips for overcoming frustration and working together to create solutions to big problems.

May 7, 2020

How-To: Understand Yourself & Motivate Yourself

Olympics Gold Medalist Natalie Cook on Motivation! (Part 1)

To help you stay motivated in your problem-solving journey, five-time Olympian and Gold Medalist Natalie Cook tells us how she sets and meets goals, and why understanding your fears and emotions is key to understanding how to communicate with others.

From Thunkable

Week Four Coding Tutorial

Code a Social App with Thunkable

Professor Wolber (USF) builds an app through which users can share useful, local, dynamic information with each other.  In this playlist,Dave teaches you how to design a UI for multiple users, create login features, create timestamp features for entries, edit entries and store data in a cloud database.


Week Five: Building tech solutions for a complex, messy, social world

May 12, 2020

Collaborating with Your Community

Team Unstoppable Tells Us How to Collaborate with our Communities

Team Unstoppable shares their experience testing their prototypes in the real world and realizing there were variables they hadn’t initially considered, and how they adapted.

May 14, 2020

How-To: Build the Dream Team (Pt 2 with Nat Cook)

Gold Medalist Natalie Cook’s Team Building Secrets

Natalie Cook, 5-time Olympian and Gold medalist, shares her secrets to building the perfect team, recognizing strengths and weaknesses, and helping each other learn and improve.

with MIT App Inventor

Week Five Coding Tutorial

Code an App in App Inventor with Karen Lang

Join Karen Lang of MIT App Inventor as she shares how she would build a motivational application with Team Unstoppable. Learn how to use a database, create an index, and more in this App Inventor tutorial.

RESOURCES

Week Six: Ethical and Empathetic Design

May 19, 2020

Creating more compassionate technology

Cynthia Breazeal on creating social- and human-centered technology

Let’s look at the social and human systems that can help us create more compassionate, ethical, and valuable technology. MIT Media Lab Professor and roboticist Cynthia Breazeal teaches us how to get started.

May 26, 2020

How-To: Think about complex systems

Breaking Down Complex Problems with Attorney Blair Decker from Hogan Lovells

In today’s video, Senior Pro Bono Attorney at Hogan Lovells, Blair Decker, uses an example of a domestic abuse case she has worked on to illustrate how we can break down complex problems into actionable, solution-oriented steps.

After watching the video, consider the following:

What role can technology play in solving a complex problem like domestic abuse?

How might a solution impact people’s lives in ways that weren’t intended?

With Thunkable

Week Six Coding Tutorial

Dave Wolber Breaks Down a Motivation App in Thunkable

Tara Chklovski (Technovation’s CEO) and Dave Wolber (Professor of Computer Science at University of San Francisco) meet up again to continue using Thunkable, this time to build an app where users can share useful, local, dynamic information using a cloud database.

Week Seven: Moral and Technical Imagination

July 8, 2020

Explaining Moral Imagination and Ethical Tech

Batya Friedman talks about why we need to consider the impacts of technology

Batya explains the concepts of moral and technical imagination, and how we can think through the good and bad impacts a technology might have on people and society.

July 9, 2020

How To: Create Ethical Technology

Activity: Ethical Cards to think through the impact of technology

To create ethical technology, we have to think through how that technology will impact lives of all stakeholders. Batya shares an activity to help understand the potential impacts of new technology during the ideation process.

July 13, 2020

Week Seven Hands-on Activity

Using Value Scenarios to imagine the impacts of Technology

Batya Friedman meets with a Technovation Girls team and leads an exercise in using value scenarios to understand how a new technology can impact all people in a society, both positively and negatively.

Support The Solve It Team

About The Solve It Team

The Solve It Team is a video series for students and families. It’s a multi-week series of conversational “how to” videos, conversations, and activities that help kids build community and engage in hands-on problem-solving.

Topics covered include: modeling how to take a big problem and chunk it into smaller pieces, develop an idea for a technology-based solution, build and code a minimum viable product (MVP), debug and troubleshoot a product, iterate on a problem statement – and above all, how to keep yourself motivated when working on a long-term project.

Supported by

We are grateful for the generous support from our partners.

We are also proud to be a member of UNESCO’s COVID-19 Global Education Coalition