Ask students to take a few minutes to jot down their thoughts and responses to one of the following questions:

• What does “freedom of speech” mean? Why is it important?
• Can you think of individuals, present or past, who have used their voice or their words to contribute something important to society or help change the world for the better? Who comes to mind, and how did they use their voice or words to create change?

1. Set the stage for what students will be learning today. Key points to mention are:

• Malala Yousafzai used the power of her voice and the freedom of speech to raise awareness and create real change around girls’ access to education.
• Students will think about the causes that matter most to each of them—in their community, country, or world, and explore how they can use social medium to raise awareness or create change to address this issue.

2. Use the lesson slides to introduce Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai to students:

• Ask students to turn to a classmate and share what they already know or want to know about Malala
• Show students slides to introduce Malala Yousafzai: history, facts, and accomplishments

3. Explain: Everyone has the opportunity to raise awareness and create change.

• What Malala Yousafzai accomplished and continues to accomplish, though phenomenal and historic, doesn’t start or stop with her.
• Each of us can use our words as a powerful tool to create change or raise awareness about a cause we care about. In fact, many young people today are doing just that. Take for example, Greta Thunburg.

4. Project on a large screen (or take screenshots and print as handouts) Greta Thunberg’s Twitter feed

Ask students:

• What is this? (Twitter feed, social media, words, pictures, posts…)
• Who is this? (Greta Thunberg, climate and environmental activist)
• What cause is Greta most passionate about and taking action on? (climate crisis, the environment, saving our planet from the damage caused by humankind…)
• (Optional) What tools or skills did Greta Thunburg use to help catalyze and create global change to help save our environment?
  

In groups of 4-5, students play an Apples-to-Apples style game in which they rapidly brainstorm small grassroots movement ideas that target a series of provided issues.

How to Play

1. The judge (a chosen player) draws a Cause Card and places it face-up on the table for everybody to see.
2. Each player (except the judge) chooses a Social Medium Card from their hand that they think is the best medium to use to create a grassroots movement for that specific cause
3. One player places a card down at a time. After placing down a card, that player must share their idea for how they would use that medium to create awareness or some sort of movement or change around that specific issue
4. After every player has placed down their Social Medium Card and made their case, the judge decides which idea they like best.
5. The player who submitted the chosen Social Medium Card wins the round, and takes the Social Medium card to signify the win.
6. The role of "judge" passes to the player who won the previous round.
   

How to Win

The winner is the player who has accumulated the highest number of Social Medium cards when the game is over.

Ask students to reflect on or discuss one of the following questions:

• If you could send one Tweet about a cause that is important to you that everyone in the world would read, what would it be?
• Optional challenge: A Tweet is limited to 280 characters (letters, punctuation, and spaces included). Can you write down your message in the form of a Tweet of 280 characters or less?
  

Students will use the design process and social medium of their choice to raise awareness or create change for a cause they are passionate about. Feel free to tailor this experience to meet the needs and interests of your students, retaining following essential elements:

1. Students should use the power of their voice (spoken or written word) and social medicum to make change or raise awareness about a cause of their choice.
2. Students should follow the 5 steps in the design process to guide their design challenge.

Materials:

• Large blank poster paper (4) for classroom brainstorm posters
• Markers
• Student worksheet: Top Causes I Care About

STEPS

1. Ask students to list different types of social medium. If they list the names of specific social media platforms, write them down, and then ask them how most people interact on those platforms.

2. Explain that students will now share the social causes that are important to them, and brainstorm different types of social medium they know about

3. Divide the class and direct half to take one set of posters, and half to the other set

4. Each group should move to their set of posters and use markers to jot down their thoughts and ideas on causes they care about, and different types of social medium they use or would like to use.

5. Give students 10 minutes to add their thoughts and ideas to both posters; encourage words, short phrases, and ideas big or small

6. Have students stop and switch spots with the other group and spend 5 minutes reading what the other half of the class wrote on their posters to get new ideas, inspiration, and to notice any common or popular topics or social medium listed

7. Explain to students that these are the initial thoughts they will use to complete a design challenge in which they will identify a social cause that is important to them, and use a social media platform to raise awareness or create change

8. Ask students to return to their seats and fill out the graphic organizer with 2-3 causes they care about most and two different social media platforms or types of social media they would like to use to raise awareness or catalyze change around this topic.

Once your students have identified the cause for which they wish to raise awareness or create change and the type of social medium they will use, guide them through the first step of the design process: Empathize

Materials:

• Student Worksheet: Step 1: Empathize

Steps

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. Depending on the topic your student selected, the type of social medium they will use, and whether they aim to create change or raise awareness, this phase of the project can look different for different students or student groups. The goal is for students to learn as much as they can about the experience of the people or place(s) affected by the cause they chose. This can take the form of “research” such as:

• Field trips
• Reading
• Online research
• Conducting or listening to interviews
• Watching documentaries
• Listening to podcasts
• Exploring social media from trusted sources

Once your students have spent time learning more in order to empathize with those most affected by their cause, they should narrow down the “problem” to identify a specific and achievable piece of the problem to address.

By the end of this step, the goal is that students have a specific and clear problem statement that will guide the rest of their Design Challenge.

Materials:

• Student Worksheet: Step 2: Define the Problem

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. In addition to the student worksheet, you may have students use any of the following additional strategies to help them define the problem and create their problem statement:

• Peer discussion
• Journaling
• List making
• Drawing
• Idea mapping
• Sharing possible actions with people affected by the problem (if possible) for feedback

Now that your students have narrowed down the piece of the problem they want to address and created a problem statement to guide them through this challenge, they are ready to have some fun coming up with lots of different ways to take action!

Remind your students that the inspiration for this design challenge is Nobel Laureate Malala Yousefzai and how she used her words, her voice, and the freedom of speech to create change. Students should use their voice or words amplified through social medium as the central “tool” to address their cause.

Materials:

• Student Worksheet: Step 3: Ideate
  

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. As students ideate, and encourage them to be bold, creative, and unafraid of listing as many possible ideas as they have to complete this challenge. Let them dream big and go for quantity—the more ideas the better!
3. At the end of this step, they’ll choose one idea from their brainstorm to move forward with.

In this stage of the design process, students will create a basic and quick model to test. The idea is to see if their idea will work, to get feedback and ideas on how to improve it, or even to scrap it all together and circle back to step 3 (Ideate) to continue brainstorming or choose a different action to prototype.

Materials:

• Student Worksheet; Step 4: Prototype

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. Depending on what students will prototype, help them in securing the resources, materials, technology, or space they’ll need.

Once your students have a basic prototype, it's time to test it to see if it achieves what it was intended to achieve. If possible, students should test the prototype with a population that is impacted by the cause they are trying to raise awareness about or change. If this is not possible, encourage your students to get feedback from people outside your classroom. This might be your larger school community, your local community, friends or family.

The most important part of the testing step is for students to collect as much feedback as possible so that they can improve their creation to be more effective.

Materials:

• Student Worksheet: Step 5: Test
  

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. Help students plan ways to get real feedback as they test their prototype. This may include helping them figure out who to get feedback from, or helping them contacting and setting up a time to test their prototype with others and gather feedback.
3. Have students brainstorm a list of targeted, purposeful questions they can ask to gather information that can help them improve their prototype.

It’s time to celebrate your students' hard work and achievements. Consider having a class celebration where students or groups can share the story of the journey they took in this design challenge. Invite others to come and look, listen, and ask questions. Remind your students (and any invited audience) that this Design Challenge was not simply a “school project,” but rather the same exact process designers, engineers, scientists, and many others use in the real world every day to develop solutions to complex challenges.