How Accessible Tech Can Promote Empathy and Collaboration

“It worked!”

Sixth-grader Sofia was astonished. After she had designed and tested an LED circuit for three straight classes, her electronic greeting card was lighting up. The greeting card wasn’t just a school project—it was also a message to Sofia’s brother.

As a design and technology teacher at the American School of São Paulo in Brazil, I’ve developed a three-part didactic sequence centered on empathy and sustainability that integrates analog and digital circuits, programming, and physical prototyping. The unit is aimed at combining technical instruction with the design process, guiding students from exploration to collaboration via strategies that position them as active learners and co-authors of their own educational journeys.

Throughout the unit, I’ve seen students who are initially hesitant about electronics become comfortable with terms like input/output, efficiency, and logic loop. They also gain insight into how design choices influence system behavior. Best of all, this learning experience doesn’t require high-end materials or complex platforms. Each project in my design and technology course is replicable for other middle school teachers, especially teachers interested in new lessons that overlap with STEAM content.

From Concepts to Action

Before jumping into the main projects, students spend a few weeks engaged in hands-on lessons that are broader in scope. They explore concepts such as systems, interdependence, sustainability, and problem-solving, while also building technical skills and theoretical foundations.

To learn about systems, students analyze familiar situations; they identify visible inputs and outputs and represent interactions through annotated diagrams. Interdependence is approached through a spectrum-based visual activity. Students evaluate images and assess how the elements within each image are interconnected, then discuss their reasoning as a group. Sustainability is introduced experientially, through a guided breathing activity that prompts discussion about endurance, limits, and responsible resource use, followed by affinity mapping to group sustainable behaviors. For problem-solving, students relate personal experiences to historical examples, then use the Noun Project platform to select symbolic icons that represent different approaches to resolving challenges.

Tools and Strategies for All 3 Projects

For each project, my students use a six-phase adapted design cycle: brainstorm, define, make, test, reflect, and transfer.

During the brainstorm phase, entry tickets activate prior knowledge and make initial connections. Students reflect on familiar situations or past learning experiences and use those references to spark their early design ideas.

Collaboration is central to the entire unit, especially during reflection phases. Even for the projects that are completed individually, students still engage in constructive feedback exchanges, learning how to think critically, share insights, and express ideas clearly. This environment is designed to nurture respect, risk-taking, open dialogue, and mutual support.

As projects progress, students are asked to make independent choices and adapt their plans. They develop ownership over their work, explore alternatives, and learn how to respond thoughtfully when challenges emerge. In the final phase of each project, I ask students to apply what they’ve learned to new contexts and reflect on the broader relevance of their design decisions.

All of the projects rely on Google Classroom for organizing instructions and student submissions, as well as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Screencastify (a browser-based platform for recording and sharing short videos) to assist with planning, reflection, and documentation.

Project 1: Light-Up Greeting Cards

For the first project in the didactic sequence, I introduce the fundamentals of electricity and circuits, including simple, parallel, and series configurations. Students then design basic LED circuits and create personalized light-up electronic greeting cards. Each student makes a functional card for someone special, such as a parent, grandparent, sibling, or close friend. This personal touch adds emotional meaning to the task and introduces key ideas such as input, output, polarity, and current flow.

To explore circuits, students first use free PhET simulations and then move to hands-on experiments using LEDs, alligator clips, switches, and battery holders. For their greeting cards, they use copper tape, coin cell batteries, LEDs, and thick A4 card stock.

This project helps students connect creativity with function. As part of the assessment, they record short videos explaining how the circuit works, the principles it illustrates, and the person who will receive their cards. As a final step, they deliver the cards and have the option of sharing the recipient’s reaction with the class, reinforcing the idea that learning can be both expressive and meaningful.

Project 2: Interactive Awareness Posters

In connection with the theme of sustainability, students create interactive posters to promote energy-saving habits in school spaces. They start by discussing prior experiences with interactive exhibitions and defining possible themes for their posters. Then they gather in pairs to design displays that respond to light or motion and feature attention-grabbing slogans. Messages such as “Turn off the lights when you leave the classroom” are triggered by proximity or ambient conditions. The posters are installed in public areas of the school during Earth Week as part of our “Tech for Good” showcase.

The awareness posters integrate a micro:bit microcontroller, which costs roughly $20 per unit (I have pairs of students using each microcontroller). It’s programmed via the micro:bit classroom and MakeCode platforms—both of which are free and have small learning curves for teachers—along with proximity sensors, actuators such as servo motors and LEDs, and decorative materials on A3 paper. They are displayed on mobile boards in shared school spaces.

Project 3: Smart Houses

The final project involves designing and prototyping smart houses, with the goal of connecting automation and energy-saving practices. Students begin by creating digital models using computer-aided design tools, and then build physical prototypes using cardboard and a simple wood structure.

Automation is incorporated through the integration of sensors, actuators, and, in some cases, AI models to simulate features like smart lighting or ventilation. This culminating project synthesizes skills and ideas from across the unit. Teams document their process, present their prototypes in an open showcase, and explain both the functionality and design rationale behind their solutions. The project also encourages students to reflect on how technology can be used to promote more sustainable living environments.

Students develop their ideas using Tinkercad, a free and accessible 3D-modeling platform, before transitioning to physical prototypes made of cardboard, balsa wood sticks, glue, and basic tools. To add automation, they use the GoGo Board, a low-cost educational microcontroller with a short learning curve and powerful capabilities. To incorporate AI features, students create models with Google Teachable Machine, a free, no-code tool for supervised learning that assists users through data collection, training, and testing to recognize patterns and simulate automated behaviors in smart house systems.