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.

9/22/2014

15 minutes of glory


We have exciting news to tell you about the second year of Inventors4Change. These include new schools, new partners and new methodologies. But before explaining this news we want to tell you that our project participates in the "15 minutos de gloria" contest (15 minutes of glory). 

If you like our project and the work we are doing, you can vote for it through this page (you can  use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Linkedin), or you can simply send a tweet containing the hashtags #inventors4change and #simoeducacion.
Tweet example: We want #inventors4change to have 15 minutes of glory in #simoeducacion
If we succeed we'll have the opportunity to explain our project in SIMO Education 2014 in Madrid, and chances to win a prize that will help us fund our project.

7/01/2014

Education for Global Citizenship, The Brussels Proposal


On June 24-25 we attended the Conference on Education for Global Citizenship in Brussels. During the conference 100 academics, practitioners, institutions, students and educators have contributed together to the “Brussels Proposal – Towards a new direction for Education”. CONCORD Europe took the initiative to organise the conference in partnership with Oxfam Interational, the North-South Centre, Beyond2015, UNESCO, Education International, the Global Campaign for Education, Engagement Global, CIVICUS and in support of the Global Education First Initiative.

Here you can find the full text, and below we share the concept of  Education for Global Citizenship (EGC). From Inventors4Change we totally agree with this definition, and we will integrate the concept into our project.
EGC is integral to quality education, enabling learners to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes that can support them being active and responsible, global citizens. EGC is grounded in a rights-based approach to education, utilises learner-centred participatory pedagogy (including peer-to-peer and lifelong learning), and concerns all education stakeholders across sectors. EGC should be embedded within all subjects, across learning environments and integrated into all education pathways (formal, non-formal and informal education). EGC should also be developed to suit local contexts. EGC is based on an understanding of the purpose of education as going beyond the acquisition of knowledge and cognitive skills, to transforming the way people think and act individually and collectively.
This is not new, and this education already exists in many continents, schools and communities in many forms and different practices. Education for Global Citizenship will need to be built on all these traditions such as Education for Sustainable Development, Development Education, Global Education, Human Rights Education and Peace Education.

 

5/23/2014

Presenting Inventors4change at #JPE14


Last Saturday we presented our project at the VI Jornada Catalana de l'Ensenyament de la Programació a Primària i a l'ESO (#JEP14). This conference is held annually at Citilab in Cornellà (Barcelona), where primary and secondary teachers interested in introducing robotics and programming in schools meet and present their innovative projects.

We presented a brief summary of our pilot project with four schools, and showed some of our first results. Next presentations at Girona Talent and Scratch@MIT 2014.

 

3/09/2014

Sharing our results at the upcoming Scratch Conference 2014 at MIT Media Lab

http://scratch.mit.edu/conference/

We are happy to announce that we will be in Cambridge next August presenting our project at the Scratch@MIT Conference 2014, a playful gathering of educators, researchers, developers, and other members of the worldwide Scratch community.

We will give an ignite talk presenting the results of our pilot project and explaining how we will open the initiative to other schools and organizations. 

Wondering what is the Scratch@MIT Conference? Take a look at this overview from the Scratch@MIT 2010 conference:

 
Scratch@MIT 2010: Conference Highlights from Karen Brennan on Vimeo.

3/03/2014

Pilot project is over. But that's not the end of the story :)


After some busy weeks of virtual exchanges and collaborative inventions, we are glad to announce that the pilot project has finished. We have so many things to share with you, and we will do it during next weeks.

Today we want to share one of the already finished Scratch projects. In this case it's a story about children's rights made by a group of children from India, with the help of children from Catalonia. 

If you can not see the project try it here.

2/06/2014

Awesome people and projects


Although our project is young and is still a pilot, our posts and our profiles on social networks have generated curiosity and interest among many people and projects from many diferent parts of the world. 

Today we want to highlight some of the amazing people that are following Inventors4Change on Twitter. Look at their profiles, backgrounds and projects, they are simply awesome. We are excited to have them among our followers. Starting today, we will occasionally highlight people and projects that we find interesting and/or relevant regarding our project.

Roya Mahboob @RoyaMahboob 
Roya Mahboob is an Afghan entrepreneur and businesswoman. She founded and serves as CEO of the Afghan Citadel Software Company, a full-service software development company based in Herat, Afghanistan. She has received attention for being among the first IT female CEOs in Afghanistan, where it is still relatively rare for women to work outside the home. On 18 April 2013, Roya Mahboob was named to TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People In The World for 2013 for her work in building internet classrooms in high schools in Afghanistan and for Women's Annex, a multilingual blog and video site hosted by Film Annex. This was the 10th anniversary of the TIME special edition. The Women's Annex platform give the women of Afghanistan and Central Asia a platform to tell their stories to the world.  

Hannah Godefa @hannahgodefa 
Founder of #pencilmountain and girls advocate. Hannah Godefa is UNICEF National Ambassador for Ethiopia. She is 16 years old and now lives near Toronto, but she campaigns tirelessly to raise funds for her native land. Hannah spearheaded the international movement called Pencil Mountain in which she helped collect school supplies for Ethiopian children

Sayamindu Dasgupta @sayamindu 
Graduate student at the MIT @medialab. Developer of technologies that enable children to engage in creative learning experiences. Member of @scratchteam. Before joining the Media Lab, he worked for the One Laptop Per Child Project, where he was the architect of OLPC’s bookreading system. Visit his website at MIT.

Artur Taevere @Taevere 
CEO of Creative Generation @creativegener, high quality professional development for teachers, focused on teaching/learning collaborative problem solving.  In his previous role on the leadership team of Teach For All, Artur and his team supported the professional development of teachers and school leaders in 25+ countries around the world. He has visited around 100 schools in Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Australia. Visit Creative Generation.

Leshell Hatley @Leshell
Leshell is a passionate computer engineer, educator, and researcher who continuously combines these three attributes to create innovative approaches to teaching students between that ages of 3 and 73. She has logged over 15,000 hours teaching African-American and Latino elementary, middle, and high school students in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) concepts throughout NY, NJ, and DC. She also created an educational animation and digital learning series called 'Myles & Ayesha,' which features two young African-American learning companions who explore the world and concepts related to STEM, reading, and history, while simultaneously teaching their audience through interactive games and activities. Founder of @upliftdc, which powers @youthapplab @roboticsindc @mylesandayesha @blackscholars. Visit her website.

Eric Rosenbaum @ericrosenbizzle 
PhD student at MIT @MediaLab, co-creator of #MaKeyMaKey, Singing Fingers, MelodyMorph, MmmTsss, Glowdoodle, member of @ScratchTeam. His current research explores the intersection of music, play and improvisation. He has a background in neuroscience, music, and education. Check out some of his projects.

1/29/2014

Education For All Global Monitoring Report


Today UNESCO released the 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report. We think that this report about "Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all" is interesting for all people who follow our project or participate in it. It shows why education is pivotal for development in a rapidly changing world, and explains how investing wisely in teachers, and other reforms aimed at strengthening equitable learning, transform the long-term prospects of people and societies. 

We highly recommend you read it.

1/24/2014

An example of children's collaborative work. India-Catalonia


Children from Veïnat school and Carme Auguet school have already started creating Scratch scripts to program their stories about children's rights. They have been adding new characters, designing the stories, creating dialogues, and making animations.

Below you can see and example of an animation. The character was created by children of Parikrma School (Bangalore, India), the background by children of Veïnat School (Salt, Catalonia), and now children of Veïnat created an animation by adding a new costume to the character. It's just the beginning of the story, but you can already see their impressive collaborative work! The project is made on Scratch. Clicking the green flag runs the project.

1/16/2014

Children have already started to create stories about children's rights


After the Christmas holidays our children started to create stories about children's rights with the characters and backgrounds they already had designed. Here below you can see an example of a conversation held between children from schools Carme Auguet and Veïnat. After inventing the story collaboratively, and after reaching a consensus, children will begin to program it. Both the conversation and the programming are made with Scratch.


1/14/2014

Learning to code to fight against inequality among children


Yesterday our project was featured on the catalan newspaper Diari Ara. Nereida Carrillo wrote an article with an overview of learn-to-code initiatives in Catalonia and around the world. Part of the report highlighted initiatives focusing in disadvantaged groups of children, and our project was one of such.