Ideakidz, Design Thinking and Innovation Challenges for kids

Teaching Design Thinking and promoting entrepreneurship to kids in any school in order to participate in real challenges launched in a free and easy to use open innovation digital platform.

In México and Latin América, public schools are teaching an outdated and incomplete set of skills to primary and secondary students. 
Reading, writing and basic math are the same foundational skills I learned 40 years ago, but they are no longer enough to secure being part of the workforce of the future.
Worse still, with an average schooling in the country of 8 years, many young people drop out of school without the minimum skills to thrive in the labor market, let alone those needed to start a business, destined to a low-wage, repetitive, routine and sometimes dangerous work.

I use and teach design thinking  for innovation and creative problem solving , very often I hear the expression: “It would have been great to learn this skills a long time ago” 

It would be game changing to give the students the opportunity to learn a easy to use human centered process to create new things or solve problems and to live the experience of transform their ideas into prototypes and then into real solutions, participating in challenges at their schools, communities and countries, giving them the chance to experience the joy of perform creative work, instead of repetitive tasks.

Ideakidz is a program aimed to teach Design Thinking to students in public schools, allowing them to use this creative process to create solutions  to participate in innovation challenges created by schools or other organizations in our digital platform 

Ideakidz will promote qualities like empathy, creativity, innovation and collaboration , the critical use of ideas and abstractions, project based collaboration and the discipline and organization to develop a solution.

Ideakidz is based around a free digital platform where as member you can download workshops for students, guides for teachers, plans for build low cost furniture and design, create and launch challenges.

Number of workshops registered in the platform and materials downloaded - 10,000 design thinking workshops

Number of challenges registered and sponsored in the platform with materials downloaded by schools or institutions - 1000 challenges designed, created and launched

Number of spaces registered in the platform with their respective sponsors - 100 innovation spaces created in public schools

Ideakids is a blend of a program for skills development, a collection of customized materials  and a practice of collaboration and solution development created for kids. 
Enabled by an open innovation digital platform where schools and institution can create and launch challenges  and where students can  submit solutions.
Two components: 

1- A website that allows to create and launch challenges by any school or institution and also allows the teams in classrooms and to submit solution by the teams in classrooms and schools.

2- An app for smartphones and tablets that allows students  to browse, submit and edit a solution.

Design Thinking is a easy to learn user centered process to solve problems and create new solutions.

The program would allow to activate schools and institutions with the help of sponsors to launch challenges aimed to solve real problems in the school or in communities, regions and even countries.

We start by training volunteers and teachers or giving them access to online  training materials to learn how to offer workshops to kids, how to transform the classrooms into low cost innovation spaces and how lo launch challenges using our digital platform.

Sponsors or governments use the platform to offer incentives to the students.

The program is deployed trough ideakidz.org

ideakidz is a full-fledged ideation platform with a crowd formed by primary and secondary students., available to any school or institution with a computer with internet access and a current generation browser.

The website will offer a set of downloadable materials and training videos, a challenge creation section, a challenge browsing section and a section to submit solutions

The website will allow to companies, institutions or governments to propose or select challenges to sponsor.

There will be an iOS and android app for smartphones and tablets for challenge browsing and submission of solutions.

Phase 1-Now
Team consisting of three volunteer instructors and two developers all working part time in the creation of materials and the development of the platform
Goal of launching a beta in December 2017

Phase 2 - January 2018
Use of founding committed by Axtel foundation and rotary international
Application for government grants
Definition of sustainable business model

Phase 3 - May 2018
Versión 1.0 of platform
Launching of sustainable business model
Full time commitment of team
Considering option of a for profit version of the platform oriented to private schools, universities and organizations and the creation of private academies with scholarships.

1- Lack of time or resources from me or my team

2- Lack of volunteer support

3- Lack of funding

4- Lack of a developers team fully committed to the platform

5- Lack of access to technology from schools or students

6- Lack of interest in public schools or institutions

7- Lack of interest or support from civic organizations

8- lack of interest and / or support from government 

https://twitter.com/ideakidz

https://www.instagram.com/ideakidz/

https://www.facebook.com/ideakidzprogram/

Exactly that is the reason we are applying to Solve:
To get acces to the resources, the expertise, the mentorship, and the know-how that will allow us to:

1- Design a better education experience
2- Identify better ways way to engage students,schools, communities, organizations and governments
3- Create a world class digital platform

But above all we need help to 
4- Create a sustainable business model for ideakidz.

Thanks

We have founding from Axtel Foundation  and a pledge from the local rotary chapter to double available founding

We are working with bluebox ventures defining the right approach to promote entrepreneurship skills in the students

We are in talks with latinamerican Fab Labs Network to use additive technology in ideakidz

The SOLVE community?

IdeaCo´s City X Project in USA

Design Club in UK