In our current political climate with its intolerance, fear mongering, and misinformation, educational technology that is worth its salt must be steeped in social justice. #edtech is not valuable if it doesn’t level the playing field, promote compassion and understanding, or expand students’ horizons beyond the immediate and the local.

In fact, the best uses of technology do all of these things in collaborative environments that unite students and teachers with a common mission and expand students’ viewpoints. Specifically, I would argue that the secret sauce of 21st century edtech is global competence, knowledge and skills about the world around us that promote student empathy.

One amazing example of technology supporting the mission of global competence is happening right now at Robert Adams Middle School in Holliston, MA. Technology/Engineering teacher Michelle Roy and Social Studies teacher Matt Cotter are collaborating on a project that uses Micro Bits, tiny computers that students can program, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),  a social justice platform being embraced around the world.

Microbits has created a Global Challenge for students to use Micro Bits to design an application that will help support the goals of the SDGs. Specifically, they are asking students to address “goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), 4 (Quality Education), and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) by focusing on the themes non-communicable diseases (NCD) and safety.”

Mr. Cotter’s students had previously adopted small changes to support social justice in their own life as part of the UN’s World’s Largest Lesson. Students were introduced to the SDGs using a number of online resources and videos and then adopted one small change that each student could adopt in their own life.

Now, students are using their knowledge of the engineering design process to define the problem, design, prototype, code, evaluate and present, re-evaluating and then entering the competition:

Step 1: Define the problem

• Take the broad issue of NCD and focus on a smaller component problem.

Step 2: Designing the innovation

• Develop an original innovation using the Micro:bit to address the problem

Step 3: Prototyping

• There are 2 parts to the prototyping task: Creating a paper prototype and coding, testing and debugging a micro:bit prototype

Step 4: Evaluating

• Refer back to the initial criteria to evaluate the work.

Step 5: Presenting

• Students present their work in an innovation showcase where they show and explain the innovation to the other students.

Step 6: Enter the global competition

In this way, technology is allowing students to develop ideas firmly rooted in their own personal experiences and then take their ideas on the road, sharing them with the global community, a perfect blend of relevance, technology for social justice, and global competence.