SOS Smartphone

The teacher proposes a scenario to the class in which help is needed: 

You are taking a walk in the mountains with your parents, you encounter a person who has fainted and cannot call for help. Your parents' smartphone is dead, but the person has his or her own with them. You want to call for help, but you don't know the person or the personal medical information needed for help, and you don't know your exact location. 

The teacher then asks the class: "Can you do anything to help the person in distress? Do you have any tools available to get help? Do you have all the information needed for help to intervene properly?" 

After a brief discussion, if it has not already been suggested by the class, the teacher reveals that the tool available to get help to arrive is the smartphone of the person to be rescued and that inside it is contained all the basic personal information useful for the rescuers to intervene properly. 

Each student is given post-it notes and on each note is asked to write down a piece of personal information, specifying that it must already be in a smartphone. Each pupil may write up to five pieces of information, but each piece of information must be written on a different piece of paper. In turn, each pupil will read his or her slips of paper and attach them to a board or interactive whiteboard. 

Once the reading is finished, the teacher will group the post-its by eliminating those that are repeated several times (e.g. if two post-its contain the information "photo", only one will remain on the interactive whiteboard or board). 

The teacher asks to indicate which of the information present is really useful in an emergency. If there is no information present that is considered useful in an emergency, the teacher will guide the class to the exact content (e.g. the teacher can prepare differently coloured post-it notes containing the right answers and stick them up during the discussion as a hint to the class). 

Having identified all the useful information, the teacher will show the class a poster with a smartphone drawn on it with the emergency number written on the screen (see attached "S.O.S. Smartphone - Smartphone in Emergency" below). On this they will draw together the information on a smartphone identified as useful in an emergency that can be given to help during an emergency call.

Entering this simple information into your smartphone can be crucial in helping rescuers assist a person in distress: 

- First and last name 

- Home address 

- Allergies 

- Medication being taken 

- Blood group 

- Therapies being followed 

- Willingness to donate organs 

- Emergency contacts 

This information is accessible even when the smartphone is locked and can be shared during an emergency call. In this way, anyone is able to intervene correctly in the type of situation introduced at the start of the activity or in any emergency situation in which we think we do not have the tools or information to provide help. 

The teacher can share with the class the Guide on how to use smartphones in emergencies (see attached "S.O.S. Smartphone - Guide on Smartphone use in emergency" below) or consult the Android and iOS operating systems guides on how to enter emergency information into your smartphone.