Documentation

Project: Creative Technologies in the Classroom/Barcelona
Presenter: Arduino Verkstad AB
Malmö, Sweden
Interviewee: David Cuartielles
www.bcn.verkstad.cc
Photos: Arduino Verkstad AB
The N.I.C.E. Award 2015 is looking for new and stimulating
innovations that are solutions to global problems.
What problem do you address with your project?
We are looking at how education can benefit from including
new technologies and 21 st century processes as part of the
standard curricula. One of the main issues is how to help
teachers to not only learn about new technologies, but to
establish processes to have them updated year after year.
Technology changes at a fast pace, but teachers have a
limited amount of time to devote to their own education.
Our project looks at new ways to interlace teacher training
with student training.
What reactions have you received yet? Is the world
ready for your solutions?
What are the creative and business characteristics of
your project? Can both, business and creativity, be
distinguished clearly?
The creative characteristics of our project are the way we
address the education of kids as a three-step process: maker
labs, project building and public display. The students
are invited to explore the more creative uses of technology
in order to pursue projects they suggest by themselves.
Concerning the business aspects of this project, we are
looking at how we can offer our platform in the form of a
subscription model, for schools to keep a constant series of
updates on a yearly basis. We create models that teachers
can apply at the beginning of each academic year.
So far, the reactions from both teachers and students have
been very positive. According to the data we have gathered
from the people participating in our project, 95% of the
students would recommend our project to other students;
there have been no teachers disliking it, yet.
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