SensED IoT Education Program

Think Big Foundation and Cisco have teamed up to launch SensED - an IoT education program - to better prepare students and educators for this emerging field, and to leverage the unique opportunities available in Kansas City and ignite a new generation of social innovators.

Fall 2015 Pilot


What is it?

SensED IoT is a project-based, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education program for high school and college students, designed to highlight and provide real-world experiences in the emerging application of the Internet of Things. SensED features a free, open source IoT curriculum designed by Greg Toth from IoTDevLabs in Washington DC, and was featured in the 2014/15 Global Team Challenge - a smart city application development series from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and US Ignite.

The program offers an interdisciplinary approach to critical thinking, creative problem solving, programming and data science around the subject of IoT. Students will:

  • Build hardware and software to collect, exchange, analyze and compare real-world sensor data through the Internet.
  • Learn about hardware and software through mentoring, workshops and hackathons, and taking advantage of the surging Maker movement.
  • Analyze collected data and compare between school teams, taking into account differences in location, timezones, climates, etc.
  • Brainstorm how this fits into a Smart City ecosystem.

Student teams will participate in an Innovation Challenge, working all semester on a creative project concept to be showcased at ‘Demo Day’ on December 6, 2015.

Brought to you by

2015 SensED Pilot is available to students at these partner schools*

How does it work?


Innovation Challenge

Think about a problem you see today or expect to emerge in the next 5 years? How can connecting more devices and everyday objects to the internet or other networks help to solve this problem? If you’re a student who likes to take a creative approach to projects – this challenge is for you! Use your skills to help envision new solutions that can be enabled with Internet of Things technologies – both now and in the future.

The goal is to challenge students to come up with new ideas on how technologies from the Internet of Things can improve education, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, retail, transportation, smart cities or find new solutions that can help many industries.

Demo Day

The SensED IoT program will close the Innovation Challenge with a celebrated showcase to highlight team concepts with storyboard displays and demos at Think Big on December 6th from 1pm to 4pm. Demo Day is open to the public.

Judging Criteria

Student projects will be judged by a group of local professionals on the merit of the following criteria:

  • Creativity - Innovation Impact
  • Public Good - Social/Environmental Impact
  • Economic Benefit - Financial Impact

Prizes

Yes, there will be swag and prizes — details coming soon!

Getting started

Are you interested in participating or starting a student team? Download a starter kit to learn more. Or, contact us for more information.

  • Educator Kit
  • Mentor Kit
  • Student Kit
  • Student Team Entry Form

Key Dates

AUG 14 Educator Workshop (STA Only) - 9am to 11am
SEP 9 Educator Workshop (All Schools) - 6pm to 8pm
SEP 19 Launch Party at Think Big - 10am to Noon
SEP 19-20 Techweek 24-hour Hackathon 11am to 11am on Sunday 9/20 (Optional)
SEP 25 Sign up deadline for teams
SEP 30 Mentor matching
DEC 6 Demo Day at Think Big - 1pm to 4pm


Resources

Project ideas

Educator tools

What does all this mean for Kansas City?

Earlier this year, the Kansas City Council approved a $15 million agreement with San Francisco based Cisco Systems Inc., to turn a two-mile stretch of the streetcar line into a “Smart City” network - the largest deployment currently in North America.

City leaders, Cisco, and other key partners will collaborate to execute “phase 1” deployments along the downtown Kansas City streetcar path and surrounding areas including:

  • An intelligent Wi-Fi network constructed, managed and owned by Sprint
  • An Enterprise Mobility Services Platform to enhance the resident and visitor experience over a mobile app
  • A “Living Lab” development data portal managed by ThinkBig Partners
  • Smart lighting and video as sensors in collaboration with Sensity
  • CityPost interactive digital kiosks and mobile citizen engagement
  • Future collaborations of smart water innovative solutions with Black & Veatch
  • Identifying technologies for next-generation police cruisers

For further assistance or more information, please contact us.

 

* The SensED program is in limited pilot deployment, therefore student teams are restricted to the school partners listed above.