How to Solve Problems with Your Phone
By Mozilla Digital Skills Observatory, released under the CC-BY-SA license.
4 hours
Use your phone to be more creative, solve problems and be more productive. The web is full of resources for everyone; let’s figure out how to use them for our benefit.
Web Literacy Skills
21st Century Skills
Learning Objectives
- At the end of the intervention, participants will have a better understanding of the different ways that they can use their smartphones to support their livelihoods and improve their lives. They will have learned the full potential of their device.
- At the end of the intervention, participants will feel some ownership over the content that they have discussed and outlined together. We will curate their ideas and examples into a curriculum that can be published online.
Audience
- 13+
- Beginner web users
Materials
- Icebreaker activities
- Markers
- Paper
- Pens
- Sticky notes
- Challenge cards
- Activity handouts
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A Different Kind of Intervention
Why is it different?
Since we don’t have all the answers about how to hustle with your phone, we need to crowdsource them.
What does crowdsource mean? When you crowdsource something, you find a solution by drawing from a lot of ideas from a lot of people. The “crowd” of people gives you your answer.
Since we want to see a progression in the learning curve, we want to make this intervention a bit different and invite participants people to feel like they have reached a level good enough to teach each others. For example, participants should feel like they can teach their community how to leverage the potential of their smartphone after the intervention.
What is the new format?
Instead of teaching specific content, we will invite participants to reflect and find their own solution.>/p>
We are designing a workshop which invites people to be creative and to collaborate.
While we are inviting participants to find their own solutions, we will provide a lot of helpful materials, processes, and advice to them so they don’t feel overwhelmed at first.
What are the deliverables?
Each [participant/group/site] will leave with a list of tips, lessons, examples and ideas about how to hustle with your phone, how to make your life more productive, and how to use the smartphone to find solutions to your problems. THE FULL POTENTIAL.
We will combine that list into a final curriculum that we can then publish.
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Icebreaker & Team-building
15 minutesMaterials needed:
- An idea for an ice breaker
- Facilitation needed: Everyone. 1 person lead the icebreaker.
- Documentation needed: Observe the atmosphere, write down notes.
Split everyone up into teams of ±4 people
Each team should have a Mozillian or DDD staff with them: they will be facilitators and note takers.
Do an ice-breaker.
Come up with a great name, and a short motto/poem/song/chant.
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Brainstorming Solutions to a Challenge
45 minutesMaterials needed:
Facilitation needed: 1 Mozillian per team helps and observe.
Documentation needed: Document the behaviors, answers and questions.
Each team will work together to come up with creative ways to use their phone, through a few challenges given by the DSO team and other ideas coming from their team work. Example for these challenges can come from this survey.
- Did you know that you could use online maps to get information about the roads and the geography?
- Did you know that you could use your phone to get an insurance for your health?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to sell clothes, TVS and other goods?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to be healthy?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to remember everything?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to pay bills?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to get a loan without going to the bank?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to become more independeant?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to cultivate your hobbies?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to learn a new language?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to grow your business?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to learn a lot of things?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to improve your studies?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to be an artist?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to connect directly to buyers and removing the middle man?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to manage your finances better?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to access government services?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to find love?
- Did you know that you could use your smartphone to be internationally connected?
When discussing each challenges, the teams should use the following template that will help them analyse the way that they could use their smartphones:
TEMPLATE CARD
Challenge 1: Using online maps
- What is it?
- Who in this group has already used online maps?
- Answer:....
- Who can explain what a map is? What about an online map?
- Answer:....
- Do you know how they work?
- A tip: You can insert the definition of a map here.
Observations
Each participant will look at Google map and play with it a little bit to understand what it is.
Help and questions as needed
Brainstorming
Each participant come up with an idea of how they can use it in their lives. The facilitator takes notes:
- Participant 1: I can use it to.... It’s useful because....
- Participant 2: I can use it to.... It’s useful because....
- Participant 3: I can use it to.... It’s useful because....
- Etc.
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Creative Problem Solving
90 minutesMaterials needed:
- Manilla paper
- Papers
- Pen
- Sticky notes
Facilitation needed: 1 Mozillian per team helps and observe.
Documentation needed: Document the behaviors, answers and questions.
Each participant will give a common life problem challenge and then the team will work on solving them creatively with the web or their phone.
Encourage exploration and using different aspects of the phone.
TEMPLATE CARD - PROBLEM SOLVING
Problems to Solve
Participant 1: A challenge or problem I sometimes face is....
The group together:
- Why is that a problem in your life? What are the consequences?
- Ideas to solve this problem with the smartphone ?
- Idea 1: Maybe we could use an app to do....
- Idea 2: Maybe we could use the web to seach for....
- Idea 3: Maybe we could use DFS applications to do....
- Idea 4: Maybe we coud use Social Media for....
Examples from someone who is using a similar solution:
- I’ve used this solution before to do....
- What do you need to make it work?
Participants should think through the skills they need to use this solution (example: reading a map, manipulating a map, saving a location etc.).
Repeat for other participants on additional card templates.
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Shareback
30 minutesGet together and share (and also document) the problems and proposed solutions from all the groups.
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Help Desk
60 minutesListen to people’s problems and solve them.