Startup Weekend London Education 2013

80 people, 54 hours, 50 pitches, 15 teams, 1 winner. Startup weekend was a hectic one, and it was a real privilege to be part of the organising team this year, one of the education mentors, and running the social media for the event.

There were some great ideas, some great teams, and some wonderful moments. I was particularly proud of my two BEd students Sophie and Ian, with Sophie pitching her ideas and taking a big part in a very good final pitch, and Ian getting a judge’s commendation for Musomic; his passion driven project to help children develop literacy through comics and music. To see new teachers such as themselves getting involved in the making of products which could be used for learning in homes and classrooms was heartening, as I feel all teacher should make an effort to engage at least a little in some of the areas of education which lie beyond what can sometimes be the bubble of their school. To see so many other educators involved blew me away, and I feel a much stronger presence of teachers and educators than last year led to a much stronger field in terms of ideas that had true educational value.

Later in the week at an event for ‘Computing in schools’ we discussed how we can encourage teachers to ‘get’ the maker culture that is key to many areas of computer science, and the business world more broadly. Just as teachers have to be writers in some sense to be truly great teachers of writing, I think we need to look at the model of events like these to encourage teachers to be ‘makers’ too. This could be a powerful way to induct teachers into the culture of making that many want to encourage our young people to take part in.

Blogs from the weekend

Video

Photos

Startup Weekend London Edu Photos on Google+

Tweets

Archive of all 1600+ tweets from the event.

Also, check out the blog posts from last year’s Startup Weekend London Edu