The startup and entrepreneurial mentality drenching the city of Denver is now entering into the realm of public school administration. Denver Public Schools Innovation Lab hosted the second Imaginarium, a program designed to get solutions to vexing education questions from the people on the front line. The challenge gives 4 winners $20,000 each to develop a concept for education. All you need is an idea for a tech focused solution to education, and if you win you will be paired with professional developers to make the idea a reality.
Past winners have included a tech app like Uber for school children needing a ride to school and an app that connects young black youth with mentors in the community. Participants were eagerly preparing their minute-long pitch when we got a chance to speak with participants about their ideas, as well as people who just came out to support the event.
Participants: Courtney, Cal and Shannon
“We work with student services and ability to connect Colorado. We are trying to develop an app for youth with disabilities to figure out the services that we offer, and connect them to underutilized programs. Special Ed teachers are overwhelmed, especially since schools care more about test scores. We want to give students the ability to connect to opportunities so that they take ownership and the engagement is equitable and inclusive.”
Participant: Amy
“I would like to develop a web collection of sensory stories. A sensory story is something that includes props and visuals to help tell the story. It is more popular in the UK, not as much in the US. Children are engaged and able to feel different parts of the story, for instance if it is windy a fan is blown, or if there is sunscreen mentioned in the story, you could spray sunscreen.”
Participant: David
“I am a high school guidance counselor. I would like to create a job exploration app for students to explore careers virtually. Using something like Oculus, the virtual reality interface, students would be able to put something over their eyes to similulate a day in the life of a career you are interested in. For instance, if you want to be a chef, you could see yourself in a kitchen preparing food.”
Supporter: Kirsten
“I’m here to watch and support the program. I like what an innovative platform it is, and it dovetails with [my] work. I work on a project called Chapter Be. Chapter Be is a term used by psychologists to describe the phase when people set out to become who they really want to be. There are many obstacles people have to overcome, including a fear of failure, but I admire all the participants here who are putting themselves in front of a group and trying to accomplish something. There are many people who don’t know exactly what their passion is or they are not sure, but you can start doing little things…that pique your interest to get yourself going down that path. And talk to and follow others who you see that are going down that path already.”
Administrator
“We want to listen to the community, take ideas from the hearts and minds of students and teachers. They know what they need, so we are trying to empower them to help us provide it for them. We have a couple of student developers who have been helping with the program. They learn how to code, and we provide them with lap top computers. It gets them doing something productive at the end of the day, and they are learning skills that have career potential as well.”
You can bring your prize-winning idea to the next Innovation Lab event, scheduled for this fall.
