Solve a World Problem - Discrimination & Bias Awareness
For our fifth project, we were asked to find a problem we care deeply about, and make steps toward solving it. I chose discrimination and bias, and since most of the people in our class didn't care much for that problem, I had to work in a group of two. At the end of this project, we created a club in San Marin to make people in our community aware about discrimination.
We started this project off by choosing a problem to fix. I chose the problem of discrimination because it is something I have seen happen countless times and is very unfair to the victims of discrimination. Luckily, Kevin was as passionate about it as I was. After we chose our problem, we had to do research on it. We started searching websites for information and studies about bias and mostly implicit bias (bias that you are unaware of). With this information, we were able to figure out the main problems of bias and work towards solving them.
What we found was that nowadays very little people have direct bias, and instead, most people have implicit bias. (bias that they are unaware of) Kevin and I proposed three ideas to fix this problem. |
So after many days of deciding, Kevin and I chose to create a Bias and Discrimination Club in San Marin High School. We felt that it is close to impossible for us to impeach Donald Trump, or get the equipment to make videos online, so the best bet for us was to achieve something in our reach; make a change in our community. So we created a club to make people aware about bias and discrimination in our area and how to limit it.
We started the website about this project which is located here. We also have an article I wrote about how Discrimination affects people. You can find it here:
We started the website about this project which is located here. We also have an article I wrote about how Discrimination affects people. You can find it here:
Here is the presentation we made of our decision and plan for the San Marin High School Club.
The discrimination club started on 1/19/17, and has been going on since then. We will provide updates on the club as we go, and give a summary below after each club meeting.
Meeting 1 : 1/26/17 :
Meeting 1 : 3/2/17 :
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Meeting 1 : 2/2/17 :
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Due to lack of attendance, people stopped coming to the meetings so we had to shut down the program. I learned that it is hard to make a good idea, but even harder to market it out, and that marketing is one of the most important concepts out of all business.
Engineering Design Cycle:
Identify the Need: The first thing we had to do was identify the need of the project, which was to make a step towards solving the problem of implicit bias and discrimination.
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Research the Problem: After we decided the need, we did research on it and researched discrimination based on type of disability, age, gender, race and religion. When researching gender discrimination, we realized that although women have the same rights as men, most of them are limited by gender norms. When researching discrimination based on disability, we figured out an indirect form of discrimination where people make policies that are harder to do with a disability.
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Develop possible solutions: After we did all of our research, we concluded that the discrimination in this day and age happens subconsciously, meaning most of the people discriminating against others are not even aware that they are doing it. After learning this, we made a list of things we could do to limit discrimination and bias.
-Impeach Donald Trump because he is the representative of our country and is a very discriminating towards others of different races and genders.
-Create a series of videos on YouTube breaking the common stereotypes in our media
-Make a club at San Marin High School that's purpose is to make people aware about discrimination and implicit bias
-Impeach Donald Trump because he is the representative of our country and is a very discriminating towards others of different races and genders.
-Create a series of videos on YouTube breaking the common stereotypes in our media
-Make a club at San Marin High School that's purpose is to make people aware about discrimination and implicit bias
Select the most promising solution: Impeaching Donald Trump was an impossible stretch and we couldn't afford the actors and equipment to make YouTube videos about breaking stereotypes, so we used the third idea and made a club in San Marin High School to make others aware about implicit bias and how to limit it.
Construct the prototype: When we made the decision to do a club in San Marin High School, we started to figure out what we were going to do each meeting. After a little bit of research and organization, we constructed a schedule of each meeting that you can find here:
We also talked with some of our staff and teachers to get the room and date for these meetings.
Test and Evaluate Prototype: We decided to start the club on the 26th of January, so we cannot evaluate it because it is not finished yet. Hopefully, when finished, we can evaluate and improve this design. This goes for Communicate the Design, Redesign, and Repeat.
Test and Evaluate Prototype: We decided to start the club on the 26th of January, so we cannot evaluate it because it is not finished yet. Hopefully, when finished, we can evaluate and improve this design. This goes for Communicate the Design, Redesign, and Repeat.
Reflection:
I feel like this was my most successful project yet! I really took leadership this time and since it was just Kevin and me, it was easier to make decisions and meet up for meetings. I feel two things that I did well in this project were the fact that I always was on top of everything we had to do and I was always productive. I feel that since I had a passion for this project, I was always trying to plan what we were going to do, and made sure Kevin understood too. This made it so we were never behind and had something to do all of the time. Also, since I shared an interest in this project, I was more productive during class than I have ever been. From this, I can conclude that I work best when I am leading.
For this project, I didn't really see much I could improve on, but one thing that grabbed my attention was the fact that I wasn't splitting the work well. For example, I created the website completely by myself without giving him a single thing to do. Next project if I lead, I should really think about splitting the work between others because that's one of the most important skills you need to have to be apart of a good group later in life. Another basic thing we did not do well was getting our club out there. We may have had the best club planned, but what is it worth if we can't get it out there? So next time when we are creating a product in a project, i'll make sure to remember how important advertising is.
For this project, I didn't really see much I could improve on, but one thing that grabbed my attention was the fact that I wasn't splitting the work well. For example, I created the website completely by myself without giving him a single thing to do. Next project if I lead, I should really think about splitting the work between others because that's one of the most important skills you need to have to be apart of a good group later in life. Another basic thing we did not do well was getting our club out there. We may have had the best club planned, but what is it worth if we can't get it out there? So next time when we are creating a product in a project, i'll make sure to remember how important advertising is.