>>Narrator: At the University
of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab,
design teams meet twice a week at four PM
to devise new technologies for young people.
And half the designers are kids ages seven through eleven.
>>Dana: How much do you need?
>>Two popsicle sticks, yeah, that's good.
>>Where there's a clock and it tells you the time
of the other place so you--
>>Mona Leigh: The kids are our design partners.
We work with them in an equal partnership where they're helping us
to design technology for children.
>>There could be like a place where could like click on that,
and then like send them like the money to the website.
>>Mona Leigh: So we have a give a gift section.
>>That's cool.
I like that.
>>They absolutely have as many good ideas as the big people do.
The children are experts in being children
and even though we were all children once, we weren't children in 2009.
The children oftentimes have ideas that surprise us.
They'll open up avenues we hadn't thought about.
>>We'll need to make that adjustable so we can see through both of them.
>>Yeah.
>>Mona Leigh: And it's really a process of idea elaboration,
where the kids might come out with an idea, an adult comes
out with an idea, and we find that working together, we go back
and forth and end up with these great big ideas that are much bigger
and better than we could've ever made on our own.
>>What do think about this keyboard?
Can you type an actually sentence on it?
>>Dana: It's way too small.
>>What do you think would be ideal for you?
>>Dana: Slide it out.
>>All right, try this one.
>>Narrator: Members of the kids team design group are recruited
from local Maryland elementary schools.
>>Dana: Oh, cool.
>>Narrator: They help design kid friendly gadgets and websites
for clients that include Fortune five hundred companies
and nonprofit organizations.
>>We work with mostly is National Park Service a lot.
>>Some of their games on their website are sorta cheesy,
so we are the people who like fix it up and stuff.
>>Narrator: Today's challenge is to evaluate and improve upon the website
of a nonprofit organization called People in Need.
>>Allison: This is a project about connecting people from here
that have resources to people in need in Haiti.
>>How many people know where Haiti is?
>>But why Haiti?
>>Allison: Why Haiti?
>>Dana: So these are all different people in need in Haiti.
And so you can click on one of these families.
It says, "Learn more.
Help this family.
>>Dana's partnership with Judeline."
So I can read you her letter.
It says, "The pleasure is mine to drop you a line."
>>Allison: Does she actually speak in English?
>>Dana: No, she speaks in Creole.
>>I type them and then people in Haiti translate it into Creole.
>>I thought they didn't have electricity in Haiti.
>>Yeah, they don't have electricity.
>>Mona Leigh: Corresponding with her how you back and forth like that,
that's kinda the way it's set up for you to do it.
>>Yeah.
>>Narrator: After an initial discussion, the brainstorming begins
in earnest as the group breaks into small design teams.
>>All right, go for it.
>>Nadia and Sasha are right.
>>Allison: Actually, the favorite of all
of our children is what the kids call bags of stuff,
but the adults call low tech prototyping.
>>Mona Leigh: Now what do we need the microphone for?
>>You can also do like a video chat.
>>Allison: So a kid might have an idea, and then you may say, "Yeah,
that's a really great idea, but you know,
if we make it green, then we could do this."
And then I might say, "Hey, if it's green, polka dotted
and furry, can you imagine?"
and we go from there.
And you're not sure whose idea it was eventually, but it's amazing.
>>So we have to present and show.
>>Oh.
>>Share, 'cause everybody wants to see what everybody else built.
>>Mona Leigh: There are places
where people design partner with children in school.
However, we find that in schools, a lot of times, kids are predisposed
to be a part of that adult child power dynamic,
that kind of always exists in a school
in American culture, for good reason.
You know, you have one teacher and twenty students.
So when you go into schools a lotta times,
you find that the power dynamic will carry over and the kids aren't
as free with their ideas.
>>And when it goes to her, it would be all translated
into whatever language they speak.
>>Allison: Once each of the groups has their low tech prototypes,
we come back together and we take a look at each of the prototypes.
Each of the groups presents their ideas.
>>It's like an iPod.
You press play.
It's supposed to be right there.
>>And this is a map of where your partner lives.
>>Wow, so you wanna do it totally on mobile phones?
>>Yeah.
>>Allison: Okay.
>>And then the leader will be writing what we call the big ideas,
and those big ideas, again, is almost a frequency analysis of the kinds
of ideas that are coming out of an existing session.
And it's very exciting.
>>You come up with some wonderful design directions.
>>Dana: -- it popped up like that.
>>This is if you wanna make a video to your partner,
you can just put the camera on your computer
and then you can do the video.
>>So streamlining the video taking process.
>>Allison: Good work.
>>All right [applause].
>>Allison: Okay.
Well done, folks.
Thank you very much.
>>For more information on what works
in public education go to edutopia.org