Creative ideas and team work at First German-Brazilian EdTech Hackathon

The project "Tech_la" won the first German-Brazilian Hackathon. The event involved 35 participants from seven Brazilian states, selected among 100 applicants, including students, teachers, designers, public sector workers, etc.

In order to find solutions to the challenges - collected before the event - in digital education, in the areas of sustainability, social inclusion and employability, creative and innovative ideas are needed. Ideas that were undoubtedly elaborated by the six teams during the three-day hackathon: Tech_la, CICLOS, ONEPage, ConnectTech, P2P Learning and MoodlePod developed prototypical products or services that impressed with their unique creativity.

The winning team "Tech_la" developed a low-cost device for music education and inclusion in schools. The device is intended to give children and young people - who are not yet familiar with the universe of sounds - access to various musical instruments and thus awaken their musical interest. As a result of this award, the Tech_la team will participate in the German-Brazilian Congress for Innovation and Sustainability in São Paulo in September 2022. The Second place went to the Ciclos project, which developed a digital platform to promote environmental awareness among students aged 7 to 14. The other teams developed project prototypes to simplify teachers' workloads, to promote the interaction of students on teaching platforms, to allow barrier-free use of the Moodle platform for persons with vision impairment or to counteract the shortage of qualified IT personnel through a compatible platform for disadvantaged students and companies.

The teams presented their creative ideas to the jury, which was made up of representatives from German and Brazilian companies: Dr. Jochen Hellmann (Head of the DAAD Office in Rio de Janeiro and Director of the DWIH-SP), Rafael Deschka (Director of Education for South America at the Goethe-Institut Brasilien), Prof. Dr. Kristina Reiss (Professor for Didactics of Mathematics at the Technical University of Munich), Dr. Jörn Weingärtner (Director at g.a.s.t.), Thaís Blasio Martins (Education Secretariat of the City of São Paulo) and Marina Nordi (Founder and Director of the school "Escola Mais").

The Edtech Hackathon is a long-term initiative that aims to establish cooperation between German and Brazilian organisers and mentors as well as participants in the fields of educational technologies and digitalisation in schools and universities. The initiator and co-organiser of this first hackathon, Dr. Thomas Bartoscheck, from the Institute of Geoinformatics at the WWU, founder and director of the GI@School research and student lab and head of the senseBox project, was pleased with the fruitful results of these three days:

"It was a challenge to organise and run a hackathon on the other side of the Atlantic, but the local colleagues and the dedication of the participants to digital education topics made the work easier and highly innovative and target-group-oriented products were created. Thus, another goal of the event was achieved: it also served as pedagogical and content training in innovation and solution development for all participants, including the organisers. In this way, the Brazil Centre supports the international activities of the WWU in the field of knowledge transfer and innovation promotion.

The organisation and implementation of the event was a collaboration between the Institute of Geoinformatics, its spin-off re:edu and the liaison offices of the Brazil Centre of the WWU, the FU Berlin, the TU München and the Gesellschaft für Akademische Studienvorbereitung und Testentwicklung (g.a.s.t.). The Goethe-Institut acted as co-organiser and the initiative was mainly realised with subsidised funds from the German Centre for Researach and Innovation São Paulo (DWIH-SP, where the liaison offices above mentioned are all located).

The final event with the short presentations and the award ceremony livestreamed via YouTube can be accessed in English language here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=UYpj-0ZbRpM

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