EdTech Hackathon: Technology For Early Years Learning

An event for developers, parents and early years teachers with ideas for edtech products for children aged 4 to 8.

This is kindly being sponsored by Zzish (http://www.zzish.co/), the Educational App Store (http://www.educationalappstore.com/), EdtechXEurope (http://edtechxeurope.com/) and Founders and Coders. (http://www.foundersandcoders.com/)

To register for a ticket, please sign up via Eventbrite here (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edutech-hackathon-technology-for-early-years-learning-tickets-23162310093)

Event program: Saturday

• 6:30pm: Registration/Pizza & Drinks

• 6:45pm: Intro/sponsor presentations

• 7:00pm: Idea presentations/team formations

• 7:30pm: Start hacking!

• 12:00am: Building closes

Sunday

• 8:30am: Building opens

• 8:45pm: Breakfast

• 12:30pm: Lunch

• 18:00pm: Dinner

• 18:55pm: Hacking ends

• 19:00pm: Hackathon presentations

• 19:30pm: Hackathon Winner Announcements

• 20:00pm: Hackathon ends

The main theme for this hackathon will be communication in education. Below are a series of sub themes surrounding this area:

Communication and literacy assessment:

Early language skills underpin subsequent reading and writing skills; therefore, children's early language development has a significant impact on future school performance. Without language and communication skills, children are unlikely to reach their full potential.

Challenge:Develop a literacy app or platform to help children to articulate and express their ideas and experiences verbally. This should be done with the aim of both preventing language delays from happening and helping children with existing language delays.

Parent engagement and the school readiness gap:

Parents are frequently disconnected with content and information which prepares students for primary school, hence the school readiness gap existing. The main areas which parents need more awareness of are:

(1) physical well-being and motor development

(2) social and emotional development

(3) approaches to learning

(4) cognition and general knowledge

Challenge: Creating a non-invasive platform that leverages existing content on parenting and enables parents to get connected to other parents through sharing personal development activities that have been successful for them and their children.

Ideas around social networks for parents or apps for parent to parent engagement would be great for this.

Prizes:

5 free premium memberships to Quizalize

5 free tickets to EdtechXEurope summit in June.

10 minutes presentation time to pitch hackathon project idea at EdtechXEurope conference workshop.

1 hour of mentorship with Emerge Education before presentation at EdtechXEurope

5 x 1 days of office space at Edspace (5 days of free desk space for 1 person or 1 day for 5 people)

Judges:

Esteban Jurado-Traverso, Head of business development, Digital, Oxford University Press:

Esteban has more than 15 years of experience in the media, educational and digital industries having held senior executive roles in business development, marketing and strategy lately at Oxford University Press and Pearson. He has a strong track record of developing strategic partnership with tech companies, launching channels & brands, building winning teams and products across the globe. He is also a mentor at Seedcamp where he advises start-ups at different stages. He is father of four, marriage counsellor and a speaker at parenting events on top of being a keen cyclist.

Paul Hutson, CEO, Night Zookeeper:

Paul Hutson is currently Education Director at Night Zookeeper, which is a creative writing project aimed at Primary/Elementary students. In March, 2016 he lead World Creative Writing Month on the Night Zookeeper platform, which inspired close to 7 million words published on the platform in under 30 days. Nightzookeeper.com is now used by over 4,000 teachers, in over 60 different countries since it's launch in September 2015. Paul is also a qualified teacher and has worked in education for over ten years. Prior to teaching, Paul worked in residential care for at risk children. He supported children with needs such as Autism and Asperges.

Tal Oron, COO, Lost My Name:

Tal holds and Computer Science degree from Aviv University and an MBA from Imperial College in London. He is an ex-product manager for CDRide, a personalized video startup, and founder of makersuk.org (http://makersuk.org/) as well as a bunch of night clubs in Tel-Aviv. In short, he likes to make people happy through personalized experiences.

Andy Davis, CEO, Notifyed:

Andy is the founder of Notifyed, a platform which provides free secure one-way group messaging from teachers to students and parents. His aim is to improve student and parental engagement through better communication. Prior to working in edtech, Andy was program coordinator for Wayra, a digital startup accelerator backed by Telefonica.

Sam Harris, marketing and projects manager at New Era Education:

Sam has been working in the edtech industry since graduating from Sussex University in 2011. In 2014 she spear-headed the creation of a new online content product and continues to work with teachers across the UK to create and market edtech software that supports 21st century teaching and learning. New Era’s flagship product DB Primary and associated product suite are now used by over 38,000 teachers and 285,000 pupils nationwide. New Era’s brand new app designed to support parental engagement is due for release September of this year.

Mentors:

Graeme Farquhar, Partnerships manager, The Educational App Store:

As Partnership Manager for the Educational App Store, Graeme liaises with developers to offer them opportunities to increase their brand & product awareness through the services the EAS offers. His aim is to help developers produce and market apps which are useful for both the classroom and home learning environments. He has worked with children in a variety of roles and believe that mobile learning has the potential to significantly improve education around the world.

Ray Rodgers, Ex-primary school teacher and now director of Save Teachers' Sundays Limited:

Ray worked as a primary school teacher in London for 4 years. During this time, he created a website to share the lesson plans and teaching resources that he created for his own class with other teachers. This website became the basis for a business (Save Teachers' Sundays Limited), which Ray now works full-time on, as well as employing other teachers to help create more lesson plans and teaching resources.

Elizabeth D’Arcy, Event organizer and director at Edfuse:

Elizabeth is the founder of a not for profit organization called Edfuse which helps the London edtech community promote and scale their businesses and ideas. She started working in tech in 2013 through interning for various startups in sectors ranging from food, health, retail and logistics. She is a graduate from BPP University, where she just recently finished a postgraduate in law.

Claudia Castanedo Leon, Head of marketing at Zzish:

Claudia has a master's degree in Marketing from the University of Ulster from London, where she completed her dissertation on Memrise and its use for language learning in edtech. With 11 years of experience in business marketing and media, she has developed skills and knowledge in a practical and fast paced environment.

Francesco Busiello, Head of content at Zzish:

Francesco oversees Zzish's content strategy and also helps out with coding, website design and testing. His role with content is to oversee Zzish's anaylytics strategy on their teacher dashboard for both teachers and edtech startups.

Jen Lexmond, Founder and CEO, EasyPeasy App:

Jen is CEO of EasyPeasy, the coaching app for parents during their children's early years. EasyPeasy's goal is to reduce the school readiness gap in primary education by arming parents with the ideas, advice, and support they need to get their children learning through play at home. EasyPeasy is a social enterprise and works in partnership with Oxford University to put efficacy at the heart of its development. Prior to EasyPeasy, Jen led digital transformation programmes across the public and third sector at places including Government Digital Services, BIS, MoJ, DoH, DWP, Mind, and Nesta. She has published widely on early child development and social mobility in academia and the media.

Sponsorship:

If you are interested in sponsoring this event or have an API to share, feel free to get in touch with Elizabeth at ela@ed-fuse.com