TC’s EdTech Innovation Award (INA) is a competition in which small teams of Teachers College students are challenged to design innovative educational technologies. This year, the Innovation Award theme was “Life After COVID.” Throughout the competition process, students work with faculty researchers and mentors to learn how to design, develop, and test their ideas. At the end, final product prototypes are presented and judged during a culminating competition and showcase event. The judges for the 2020 Innovation Award were TC President Dr. Thomas Bailey, Founder and CEO of The Giant Room Dr. Azi Jamilian, Google Product Lead and UX Staff Researcher Amanda Rosenburg, and the Director of Online Teacher Education Programs at the American Museum of Natural History Dr. Rob Steiner.
The winner of the 2020 Innovation Award was Team Roargh, who developed Project StorySky. The team members are David Zikovitz (MA Student, Instructional Technology & Media), Ying-Chen Lin (MA Student, Instructional Technology & Media), Mulan Fu (MA Student, Design & Development of Digital Games), and Marina Lemee (MA Student, Computing in Education). StorySky is a platform designed to allow families who are far apart to connect through the telling of personal stories. It would provide an interactive story-telling experience to allow children to bond with family members and create a keepsake of those memories. You can watch their full presentation here.
There were a number of other interesting and compelling projects presented during the 2020 Innovation Awards, such as Musitation, a collaborative VR music experience platform to encourage meaningful social interaction. This project, which won the People’s Choice Award, was created by Fei Wang, Daniel Ahn, Anh-Thu Phan, Calley Nelson, and Jason Reid. The Musitation team sought to fulfill the need for desire “music learning and meaningful interpersonal interactions” during the pandemic, as explained on their website.
The Innovation Awards are always an exciting and fun event for the CMLTD Program and the MST department, and we’re so proud of all of the projects that were developed this year. You can read more about the 2020 Innovation Award on the website. We look forward to next year’s competition!