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.

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.