KANKYO

Kankyo App

Climate Change

Application of Design Methology

Kankyo

Proposed Features

"Children who are aware, involved and empowered are potentially effective agents of change within communities to foster an appropriate approach to address climate change."

• Online profiles which record user progress

• Information about the local environment

• Activities and challenges to gain points

• Optional social networking site integration

• Opportunities to share one’s experience with other users

• Provide challenges, feedback, point allocation, and

badges to display for their peers for:

Change Agents

Future goals

""Children and Climate Change, ELDIS

Our goal with Kankyo is to create an online community based around shared environmental responsibility and engagement.

“Children born last year will come of age in 2030, by which time the effects of climate change in the form of an increase in droughts, floods and storms are likely to be more in evidence.”

• Rating and reviewing businesses, parks, and activities

for their sustainability and environmental impact

• Visiting environmentally friendly sites

• Uploading nature pictures and videos

• Recruiting friends

• Interactive quizzes

• Completing polls

Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 2013

Environmental Education

and Media

We hope to offer an emotive and engaging user-driven experience that supplements other forms of learning.

Action Plan

• Children should be in the forefront of climate change policy, advocacy and research.

• It is their right to participate in all matters that affect them.

• Today’s children are especially vulnerable now and will bear the impacts of climate change over their lifetime.

During events such as Hurricane Sandy, even children are forced to mobilize and to help others less fortunate (show pictures I have of my kids) . Environmental problems force them to examine their normal activities and question their role in the environment. It is then our responsibility to teach today’s youth how to live in this changing world and more importantly how to be agents of change in it. The question is then how do we educate and engage our future environmental stewards about what needs to be done in the future.

""Children and Climate Change, ELDIS

Sandy got children to mobilize and help others less fortunate. Seeing firsthand the impact it had, allowed them to examine their normal activities and question their role in the environment today. The question then is, how do we include this awareness and self-examination in our school-aged children's everyday life?

Next Steps

We plan to use design research

methodologies to create this Kankyo app, working with middle-school age kids to

co-create from the start.

We will start with ethnographic research:

• Workshops

• Visual thinking tools

• Interviews

• Questionnaires

Superstorm Sandy

Learning the Hard Way

"Not even the ghosts and goblins

are safe from Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy swept cities and towns along the Northeast, Halloween festivities were canceled or pushed off until a later date.

Leaving kids to question what caused this."

We plan to build a multi-disciplinary team

in the hopes of yielding the best outcomes.

Hurricane Sandy was one of the most devastating storms to hit New York City.

It displaced thousands of families, closed hundreds of schools and shocked

the daylights, literally, out of one of the most powerful cities in the world.

"Hurricane Sandy" Fow News, October 31, 2013

Gamification

D. Schaffhauser "Will gaming Save Education, or just waste time?" T.H.E. Journal, August 2013

"If the use of technology in education is about meeting students where they are, gaming would be an excellent place to start"

Education & Technology

"Children appear to shift their digital media habits around age 8, when they increasingly open their eyes to the wide world of media beyond television"

Games provide challenging user-driven experiences, which are often shared amongst friends creating a sense of community and shared learning.

Aviva Lucas Gutnick et al. "Always connected: The new digital media habits of young childrem" The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, 2011

Sharing

It is especially important that we impact tween learning through technology at this critical developmental juncture.

"Gamification is the process whereby game mechanics and aesthetics are adapted into non-game contexts such as learning and education. The work of gamification can be addressed in terms of their cognitive, emotional, and social influences. "

Karl Kapp, "Games, Gamification, and the Quest for Learner Engagement" 2012

"Play is the way that human beings learn about the world…. That's how we discover how things work."

Katie Salen qtd in D. Schaffhauser, "Will gaming Save Education, or just waste time?" T.H.E. Journal, 2013

"Adolescents are very careful about their identity formation and they care very much about how they are perceived online… They use it as a second world, outside of school and their family interactions. They are using it to talk about things they aren’t comfortable talking about in those spaces.”

"

The human mind, as powerful as it is, is no longer powerful enough for our world; the old "tried and true" human capabilities just aren't enough. Technology provides us with the new and enhanced capabilities we need. So technology isn't something we need in addition to mental activity; technology is now part of mental activity. And we need to use it wisely."

Nitin Sawhney, Ocotber 2013

Marc Prensky, "Our Brains Extended"2013

Mobile Use

Social Media Apps

Mobile technologies appear to be the fastest- growing type of digital media, and cell phones are among the most popular devices, even among low-income households

Aviva Lucas Gutnick et al. "Always connected: The new digital media habits of young childrem" The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, 2011

With more children than ever engaged in social media and mobile technology, what better way to connect with them than through these technologies. Technology enables learners to understand and interact with their environment in ways that were previously impossible.

Data from a 2013 Pew Poll shows:

Engage, Excite

Empower!

Pew Research Center 2013

• 95% of teens ages 12-17 have access to the internet.
• 74% have access from a mobile device, i.e. phone, tablet, etc.
• 78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones.

That translates into 37% of all teens who have

smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.

Considering the fact that 80% of teen internet users use a social networking sites like facebook, integrating education with social media would make learning simpler and perhaps even second-nature. When individuals belong to an online community, they are more likely to engage in real-world action.

At this current juncture, it is estimated that some 6% of teens have started using some type of geosocial service such as Foursquare on their cell phones.

A 2013 Pew Poll notes “One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users — far more than the 15% of adults who are cell-mostly. Among teen smartphone owners, half are cell-mostly internet users.”

Pew Research Center 2013

Rhea Alexander

Aaron Doughty

Pamela French

Alexis Medina

Anna Umansky

M.Madden, "Teens and Technology" 2013,

Pew Internet and American Life Project