Mentor a READing Hackathon team & build next generation tech-enabled classroom solutions
Have you ever been asked to tackle a task or a problem? Sometimes knowing how to get started is the biggest challenge. And sometimes the challenge is with the rapid prototyping and zillions of iterations a solution goes through during a Hackathon.
With this thought in mind, we asked ourselves — how can we make the participants happy and provide an optimal working environment? What if the teams run out of ideas on how to solve an issue bugging them for half a night? What if they have a great idea, but not enough experience to turn it into reality in just 24 hours?
The solution was very simple — find passionate individuals who are either early education experts or are skilled in design, and platform development, and link these brilliant people with our Hackathon teams. These mentors will act as floating resources for the duration of the Hackathon, and help teams define workflow, generate ideas, solve implementation issues and develop final presentations that will be showcased during the Hackathon weekend.
Check out some snapshots from the Google Chrome App Development Challenge organized by READ Alliance, USAID and Google in 2014-
We are looking for mentors in various capacities:
- Early Education Mentor
Professionals with knowledge of early education challenges, field implementation roadblocks, classroom problems, and can help students with forming a hypothesis, developing content and final jury presentation. Ideally, early education mentors have a minimum 2–3 years of professional experience.
- Development Mentor
Developers are software engineers and developers who will work with our participants to write code. Developers must be available to answer questions or make suggestions on technical approaches to solving problems in the areas of:
- Defining workflow
- Web and/or mobile app development
- Coding using tools such as Python, C#, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc.
- Useful APIs or existing open source systems and existing data sources to leverage
Ideally, development mentors have a minimum of 2-3 years of experience on a software development team, have mentored other developers, and have participated in at least one Hackathon.
- Design Mentor
Design Mentors are individuals with a strong background in design (graphics, web, user interface, etc.) and understand the importance of user experience, user centric design, paper mock-ups, wireframes, rapid prototyping, PowerPoint presentations, graphics and other areas of design. Ideally, design mentors have a minimum of 2-3 years of experience on a software development team, have mentored other developers, and have participated in at least one hackathon.
What’s in it for you?
As a mentor, you get to hear and see many out of the box ideas that force you to think in the most concrete level and doesn’t allow for too much of high level theoretical blather.
Moreover, this READing Hackathon will also give us a chance to take a look into tech trends. In the past, hackers have produced game changing ideas using tech that has not become mainstream yet. A mentor plays an immensely important role in shaping this idea into a prototype, which could also sell well someday?
Let’s make those great things happen! Sign up to be a mentor at the READing Hackathon.
