Never Forget

One fallacy that falls on indigenous communities is that a lot of the education systems are insufficient for teaching and successfully equipping students for the future along with implementing their own heritage and culture into the learning.  In an age of modern technology, it is no benefit for anyone that many reservations lack the tools to include heritage in their curriculum because it is a tradition that has been continued since the start of European interaction in the Americas.  It is this issue where many indigenous communities are told to deny their culture and conform to the norm and the world around them when a lot of their heritage is what makes up their identity.  The issue should be confronted with at the root with education, children are very vulnerable to the teachings that schools provide them with.  They may be able to go home and learn about their culture, but in an area like a reservation, it is imperative to show that they have a voice and do have a place that they fit into.  Reservations themselves have the specific purpose of being for indigenous groups, so it seems fit to be including heritage in education in this compared to anywhere else.  However, indigenous communities need quality learning materials that can adapt with them and allow them to make a sacred learning space for such a special community.  This issue is essential and very large in this country as according to Education Week "More than 90 percent of the tribes' roughly 500,000 children attend U.S. public school districts" and are not able to connect their culture in education.

My solution is "Never Forget" the education app that includes curriculums and lesson plans for reservation schools as a way to incorporate their culture into school.  It will include language lessons from local languages, a daily lesson that explains some aspect of the culture, and easy to access textbooks to make it easier for teachers and make students more comfortable with technology.  This is not a whole curriculum that should be followed, but rather lessons that can be implemented in the classroom during the school day.  It will be a website as well and uses technologies like Mobile Applications, AI, Machine Learning, and Web Development.  Of course, we can not provide all of what teachers need because each and every teacher is different, so we will incorporate AI and machine learning into the model.  This will allow for lessons to be tailored to the classroom and be able to adapt to the environment as it learns more and more, making it possible to predict the needs of the teacher and students much more efficiently.  It would be able to come up with lesson plans and other features in connection with indigenous communities as to make it different than using for example ChatGPT.

This will be a solution that has the potential to benefit many Indigenous communities like the Cherokee and Sioux.  This isn't a one size fits all type of solution but rather one that can be developed for everyone.  After we go through the general lessons and features pertaining to more broader communities, we will be able to individually benefit communities.  This solution will benefit the future generations by allowing them to stay connected with their culture and be able to show them that their culture and education doesn't mean that it is an either or type of situation but an and situation.

To be honest, I am not well positioned to deliver this solution because I am just one person and live in New Jersey.  The distance itself is too much to properly be able to deliver this.  However, it is possible for me to use the internet to give this possible and it will be the key to developing this solution.  I believe that having the app even in general terms will be more helpful and convincing to the communities rather than promising the product first.  Even if it is general, there will be the potential to adjust the app for the community.

I chose this stage because this solution is just a concept as it takes a lot of research and expertise to get started. I am the only one on my team so learning the skills and tools to implement this app is also taking a lot of time.

I am applying to Solve because I want to push myself to actually get this solution done.  To me, it doesn’t matter as much about winning the competition and doing the best but rather for me to do my best and actually do the project.  I think that submitting this solution is the motivation to getting to the end goal of making an app that helps indigenous schools. It is less about the competition but more about pushing myself because either way I will make an app to help those communities.

The Team Lead does not have a connection to the communities, however making the general app is our first step before reaching out to communities and finding that connection.

New Jersey

I have been working on it for 6 months