Teams polishing up presentations during final week
Last month, we announced that we were the winner of the Mirum Holiday Campaign, and the Mirum makers have been hard at work on the project, so let’s take a look at what’s happening.
Participation has been amazing, with teams from across the Mirum network tackling the brief. They include Mirum Mexico, Mirum Brazil, Mirum Miami, Mirum San Diego, Mirum Helsinki, Mirum New York, Mirum Singapore, Mirum Jakarta, Quirk and X-Prime. Each team has four members, many of whom are UX Designers, Developers, and Creative Directors. Not that Mirum had to motivate anyone, but they also sent teams a gift as an incentive.
The Mirum24 project started with a briefing video recorded at Mirum New York that was delivered to teams online. In the video, Mirum CCO Frederic Bonn and CMO John Baker joined Dev4X Founder Bodo Hoenen and Co-founder & Chief Product Officer Michael Eydman on what was expected.
Utilizing the low-cost tablet device and Dev4X’s “Learning Map” concept – an open, adaptive data structure of learning pathways “nodes” which will be linked to existing educational content like games, apps, books and videos – teams must design and create a “gamified interface that allows kids to identify and follow their own learning path,” specifically in environments where educators are absent and computer literacy is low.
As such, the three main elements of the brief are:
- Design: What will the Learning Map look like (UI)?
- Technical: What are the technologies that will make the Learning Map work?
- Communications: How do you tell the story of the Learning Map and make it clear to educators and investors what it is?
To help these teams, two Q&A sessions have been held, and the teams are asking great questions. Robust Q&A sessions mean they are really getting after it and putting their minds to work. Below are some good examples of questions that clarify the mission.
- What is the main goal of the project? In order to attract attention of impact investors and foundations who may be interested in funding the Dev4X mission, we must clearly communicate the purpose of the Learning Map to potential customers, which may include publishing companies and content delivery platforms. Therefore, we must tell the story of how the Learning Map can be a revolutionary tool that allows educators from around the world to take their existing rigid linear curriculums and make them dynamic and adaptive, allowing children to navigate them in a gamified environment and foster their ability to self-learn and learn in groups.
Our secondary goal is to attract talent that may want to support us by providing skills and/or knowledge.
- What exactly is the Learning Map and who can contribute to it? The Learning Map is designed to be open for anyone to use and contribute to, much like Wikipedia. However, also like Wikipedia and other open source projects, we will include a vetting/auditing process and trust rating to ensure quality. To be clear, the Learning Map is not a curriculum, but rather a map of all learnable concepts that describes what can be learned, not how. Content will provide the actual learning progression and the map will serve as a guide to what a student can learn.
- When is the final day for teams to submit their work? The deadline is 11:59PM EST on Friday, April 22, when teams must submit final projects via intranet upload. During the week of May 2 – 6, teams will get 15 minutes each to present their work to Dev4X founders via Lync and/or Skype. On May 9th, three Shortlist winners will be notified via email. Members from these teams will then be flown to New York, where they can use the final two weeks before the winner’s announcement to rework presentations and final ideas and reach out to mentors for help.
Final presentations will be made on June 3rd at Mirum New York, and we’re really excited to announce that these teams may also get the chance to present in front of a panel of judges from UNICEF, UNESCO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy and more.
Follow #Mirum24 and stay tuned to find out the finalist teams!
“Technology will be their tool; curiosity will fuel their learning.”