On a sunny weekend in June 2013, Prepr ran the Edu #HackForGood event to support educators with technology to teach more effectively. Seventy-five excited participants arrived at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, charged to innovate amazing new educational tools. The intimate nature of the event ensured that the teams got the hands-on support they needed to fully optimize their ideas and build prototypes. Teams also consisted of at least one educator, allowing the tools to be implemented right away.
During the weekend event, teams came together around a particular problem, collaborated on a solution, intensively designed prototypes, and presented their ideas to a panel of judges. Prepr joined beginner and veteran hackers in workshops, and expert mentors, including representatives from MaRS Discovery District, helped participants learn and grow, while recruiters supported professional development.
Through Chagpar & Associates, Prepr offered several large innovation management prizes to winners, including $20,000 in equity-based consulting grants. These grants help teams establish their start-up and move through the process of innovation planning, sourcing, and marketing.
WHAT WERE THE WINNING IDEAS?
The first-place prize went to U.Track, an online platform all about student accountability. With U.Track, students record and track their own learning, in order to encourage more personal responsibility and awareness of the student’s own learning behaviour. For example, students may track attendance on U.Track. This assists teachers too by shifting the burden of tracking student attendance onto students themselves. The increased sense of responsibility that students will nurture will also present itself in the classroom, making educators’ experience of teaching more conducive, cooperative, and effective.
The runner-up team was MindLog, a platform designed for student collaboration. Rather than collaborating with peers over messaging platforms or Google Docs, students may be more efficient working on MindLog, which allows them to highlight and comment on passages of an assignment, inviting discussion and effective, efficient team collaboration.
The second runner-up was EdCarton, the teachers’ library where teachers may share and review their most effective education tools and software. EdCarton offers a more efficient, suitable system of finding and sharing educational tools with other educators than simply sharing a Google Docs spreadsheet with peers.
The EduHack experience was an incredible success, in which Prepr got to meet with many of the University of Toronto’s brightest coders to observe their ability to solve real-world problems.
Prepr (@PreprMe) is a non-profit organization which is building a Global Lab Network to connect entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and educators to co-LEARN, co-LAB, & co-SOLVE® real-world challenges and create business opportunities.
