Facing History Hacks: Connecting Social Justice, History, and Technology

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm here with 16 of my students to figure out how they can empower themselves in addressing social justice issues specifically with technology in mind.

Brocade is so proud to be able to host Facing History's first ever civic hackathon. We focus very much on how technology connects people and changes the world. And a civic hackathon, by definition, focusing on community and how people are connected with each other, fits really well with who we are as a company.

What I'm hoping to accomplish before the end of the day is to create not exactly a small change but something bigger than that.

I'm going to ask you guys, how can we use technology to bring the past alive in ways that would inform our world today? I've been hearing students who are getting so engaged with their ideas. They said, what about if this actually worked or if this could happen? So I'm seeing the ideas take root and having them more engaged in the projects, and hopefully that they can see themselves more engaged in society.

We want to create an app for more visual learners. You can see it on your phone because people are usually on their phones, where you can search up different historical events or people. And a hologram would show up on your phone, and it would talk about the time period and you'd be able to ask it questions.

I'm here thinking how can I bring this into my classroom every year to have a very much hands-on thinking idea-generating projects that puts the focus back on them as changemakers.

I came and I didn't really know what to expect, because I had never even heard of a hackathon before. But then after today, I just realized that you can use social media in so many ways to inspire people to just get people to really do something about an issue.

Most kids might think that they can't do anything by themselves because they're teenagers, but what we're seeing here, we actually can make an improvement that we want to make on our community.