We have just concluded the second week of our #Design2030 design challenges! These challenges are the perfect opportunity for your child to flex their brainpower to create, innovate, and share some of their best ideas on what they would like the world to look like by the year 2030.
The purpose of this project is to provide families with meaningful projects that they can work on while at home as well as to increase awareness about the UN Goals and how we all play a part in achieving them.
Thank you so much to all of the students who participated this week! We were so excited looking over this week’s submissions! You should all be very proud of your hard work.
Here’s how it works:
Each day, we’ll be posting a challenge based on one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and we want to hear your ideas on how to help reach them!
Every day around 10:00 am, our Chief Creativity Officer Sam will go live on Facebook to introduce two challenges for the day; one for our 4-7 and one for 8-14 age groups respectively. All challenges for our 4-7 age group will be posted here. All challenges for our 8-14 age group will be in our #Design2030 online course.
To participate, all you have to do is read the challenge, create your idea, and get a parent/guardian to help you post it on the challenge submission page! Submissions can also be posted in the comments of the corresponding Facebook live video.
Now it is time to celebrate all of our awesome submissions! If you missed out this week, no worries! There are still two more weeks for you to get involved. Be sure to send us an email at info@stemminds.com to share your project for a chance to be featured next week!
Monday: Goal #5 Gender Equality
The STEM Minds challenge: create an app or video game that is designed to empower women and girls. We recommend using FlowLab.io for game design or Thunkable for app development.
Check out this amazing game made by one of our students! As players move through the game they collect gems that earn a new right that women now have today! So creative!
Tuesday: Goal #6 Clean Water and Sanitation
The STEM Minds challenge: Develop a solution that would provide access to clean water to those who need it. If your solution requires a physical object, you can create your prototype using 3D design. You may want to research countries that do not have access to clean water before starting to get an understanding of the type of people you are designing for.
Luke
“It’s a water filter. There are rocks at the top, and a coffee filter to filter particles before it enter 3 layers of sand,rocks,and gravel to attempt at catching smaller particles. At the end of the first filter, is more coffee filters to ensure the water is safe. On the second level is the heating area. The cans (metal) may be heated in any way. The water drips into those heating cans and boils to burn the bacteria and also keeps the chemicals and unwanted pollution at the bottom of the can which is to be removed after the process. The water (when heated) evaporates into the columns on top of the cans. To turn it back into water, it now needs to be cooled through the tubes heading down into the cup. That is a way to filter water. 
It’s cans, rocks, gravel, sand, tissue paper or cotton, straws, fire (or some way of heating the cans), and water!”
KS
“This is my water filter. How this works is that the tube sucks the water in and the water goes into the hole on the top. After the water goes through the hole it goes through the first station of the filter with the rocks ,cotton and sand. When the water finishes that stage the hole on the bottom of the first stage leads the water to the next stage, which has seaweed and oysters. The oysters filter the natural chemicals and the seaweed filters the inorganic chemicals. After that you would put a cup or bucket under the second stage, and the hole on the second stage will let the clean water go into the cup or bucket. That is my water filter. The place I pretended I was in was Mexico.”
Wednesday: Goal #11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
The STEM Minds challenge: Can you use LEGO or other materials to build a sustainable city? The buildings in your city should answer the following questions:
1. Are they durable?
2. Are they accessible?
3. Are they environmentally friendly?
KS
“The clean water is for there water supplies and the pipes are supposed to be under ground but I wanted to show you them. The dirty water is full of bacteria and lots of bacteria creates energy, so I connected power lines to the dirty water and the power lines bring the energy from the bacteria around the city. That is my smart city.”
Thursday: Goal # 7 Clean and Affordable Energy
The STEM Minds challenge: Create a prototype of a new “Smart City” that runs only on renewable energy. Your prototype can be created using 3D Design or physical materials that you have around the house.
Deea
“My design shows 3 renewable energys. The first one is solar energy. There are solar panels on each building to give each apartment electricity. The next renewable source is composting (biothermal). This helps as fertilizer for plants and also if you burn the compost it releases more carbon dioxide into the air. The last type of renewable energy that I have is wind energy. This helps with electricity by the wind. As the wind blows so does the turbines and when they spin they produce electricity.”
Luke
“It’s a turbine that takes in a water flow on the outskirts of a city. It generates power and also filters the water at the end and heads into the tube on the left side. The bacteria in the water continues along the tube to the end and into a bigger containment until it’s shipped to Kaitlyn’s (My sister) company that generates power using bacteria. The power is then transported through wires and into the city. (The city’s power plant or storage)”
What excellent ideas for clean energy! Maybe one day these amazing designs will come to life and we can have a cleaner, more sustainable world.
Friday Goal # 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
The STEM Minds challenge: One of the targets set out by the United Nations is to significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by the year 2020.
For today’s challenge, we would like you to develop a solution or business that would help provide access to technology in developing countries. You may want to do some research on what technology is already available in these countries before beginning.
KS
“If I were going to run a business to help the countries that don’t have technology I would help them in their hospitals. What I’m thinking is that a lot of rich countries are always getting more advanced technology in their hospital, so I would run a business that gives all the old clean working technology that the more richer hospitals have, I would give that to the more poor countries’ hospitals do not have. That would be my technology giving business”
And that concludes our week 2 #Design2030 Roundup! Thanks again to everyone who participated. We look forward to seeing the solutions to the worlds to-do list for the challenges in week 3. This will be our final week of the #Design2030 challenge so don’t miss out! We can’t wait to see what innovative ideas you have
Didn’t get a chance to participate? That’s ok, it’s not too late! Join in this week for some of our upcoming challenges.
Follow the link below for more details to see the 4-7 challenges:
Follow the link below for more details to see the 8-14 challenges: