Welcome to Inventors4Change

Inventors4Change brings together the projects that the UdiGitalEdu group of the University of Girona has been developing in India since 2013. The common objectives of the different initiatives are: (1) to explore new ways of learning and teaching with the help of Creative Computing and Maker Education; (2) to train teachers in schools for underprivileged children in the Bangalore area; (3) to connect these schools with schools in other countries to encourage children to co-create.

12/27/2017

Thank you again, India!


Every time our team travels to India we learn a lot of things. The teacher training courses and workshops with children in Parikrma have already concluded, and the collaborative work between India, Colombia and Catalonia is in full swing (for example, there are more than 50 articles posted on the collaborative blog). 

During our weeks of work in South India we have also taken the opportunity to visit other educational projects, non-profit organizations and research groups (Shanti Bhavan, Ananya Trust, Project DEFY, Protovillage, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology). Bangalore is an exciting ecosystem where there are fantastic opportunities to learn about education, technology, creativity and development.

The images in this post summarize the activities we have been doing. They have been automatically generated (with Google Research's Storyboard app) from the videos we recorded during our stay.





12/03/2017

Creative, critical and collaborative learning activities from India


As the children's blog grows, and they begin researching this year's theme, a part of the Inventors4Change team has moved temporarily to India to conduct teacher training activities and workshops with children in the participating schools.

Teacher training is mainly focused on Scratch and collaborative digital storytelling. Workshops with children have also addressed these same topics, but also include low-cost robotics, computational tinkering, unplugged computer science and other activities.

The videoconferences between Catalonia, India and Colombia will start very soon, and then the children will carry out the online collaborative work to co-create digital stories on the theme "learning with and from old people".

As you can see, the project is going full steam ahead! :)

PS: photos by Jordifreix.

 
 
 


11/06/2017

First video presentations of this school year


The students of Petit Plançó School (Olot, Catalonia) were the first to share their video-presentations through the collaborative blog. More videos from Catalonia, Colombia and India will be coming soon.

After these first presentations and getting to know each other by exchanging messages, the children will begin to investigate this year's topic on their own: Learning from and with old people.

10/10/2017

Learning from and with old people


This is the fifth edition of the Inventors4change program. This school year the chosen topic that children will investigate is: "Learning from and with old people".

Children from 8 schools in 3 different countries (Catalonia, Colombia and India) will explore this topic, get to know each other, and carry out digital collaborative projects.

In the photo above these lines you can see the participating students of the El Petit Plançó School. And below, the participating students from Institut-Escola de Besalú and Parikrma Schools (Jayanagar and Nandini Layout). Soon we will also introduce you to the participating students from Colombia.

8/28/2017

Sharing examples of collaborative work

We are about to start a new school year in Inventors4Change, with participating schools from Spain, India and Colombia. We will tell you the news soon, but before that we want to share a couple of videos that show examples of collaborative digital stories designed and developed by children from Spain and India during the last academic year. The theme was Access to Education. The first story was led by children of Institut de Gurb, and the second by children of Escola Carme Auguet.


6/19/2017

Colombia joins Inventors4Change


Our team attended the EdukaTIC 2017 Conference in Cali, Colombia. We gave a keynote about Makers & Changemakers and we conducted a workshop on Maker Education for teachers. 

In Colombia we also visited some stakeholders like schools and maker spaces, and the result is that three schools in the area of Cali will join our project from the next school year. The three schools belong to Comfandi, a non-profit social enterprise that provides health services, education, subsidy, housing, recreation and culture.

So our initiative is from now implemented in three countries (Spain, India, Colombia) as Inventors4Change, and in 4 more countries (Italy, Romania, Spain and UK) as InventEUrs.

3/29/2017

Federico Mayor Zaragoza awards


Last Saturday our team went to Tortosa to attend the Federico Mayor Zaragoza awards ceremony, organized by UNESCO Tortosa. We are very happy and we feel very honored because we were awarded with the Federico Mayor Zaragoza - Education 1st Prize for our project.

This award is an important recognition for our work and it keeps us motivated to continue working to promote Connected Learning and Global Citizenship Education among children to help them become changemakers. Obviously it is not an award just for the project team, but for all the schools, children and teachers who have participated in these 4 years.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza is a Spanish scientist, scholar, politician, diplomat, and poet. He served as Director-General of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999. He is currently the Chairman of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace.


2/19/2017

Field work in India 2017


Our Inventors4Change team has finished their stay in India. The objective was to conduct workshops with children and teachers of the schools participating in the project, in this way they know the tools and methodologies that we will use during the collaborative work India-Spain.


For five weeks we have performed workshops and trainings in different schools, and we have also visited other learning centers and projects that stand out for their pedagogical approach or for their educational innovations. For us, every trip is also an opportunity to learn.


In particular, this year during our stay, we worked intensively with the four schools of the Parikrma Foundation, we carried out some activities at Shanti Bhavan School and The Valley School, and we visited the Project DEFY.

 

Our actions included activities such as workshops and trainings on Scratch, LEGO tinkering, cardboard automatas, underwater robotics, drones, Arduino, and other creative learning experiences where we tried to merge technology, art and science. We also conducted videoconferences between Parikrma Jayanagar School and Carme Auguet School, and between Parikrma Nandini Layout School and Institut de Gurb.


Now it's time to create mixed virtual teams with children from both countries, and to start the online collaborative work. Children will use Scratch to create digital stories about this year's topic: the access to education.