An intense week-end for the EdTech students
When we say that our students are the “actors” of their Master’s experience at the Center of Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), this is not an empty word or a language element… Last weekend was one more proof of the dynamic and joyful involvement of our students for their topics of interests, for their projects, for their futures and for the life at CRI !
Here is a digest of what they achieved the last weekend of March:
The VR Club showcase at the Laval Virtual Festival
This year, three M2 EdTech students have created the CRI VR Club which aims at exploring virtual reality tools, introducing people to these tools and supporting the creation of projects related to science and education. The VR club was present at the Laval Virtual exhibition, one of the biggest new technology conventions in the world, to present their games made during the VR Game Jam at the CRI with the Enigma Club, an other student club of the CRI. The jam’s theme was “the sixth sense”, and 5 games have been created.
The games presented during the Festival were a great success due to their originality and freshness. No minutes have been lost: about 300 people aged from 5 to 70 were able to experience the games at our 2 stands, gracefully provided by the exhibition organizers. Games were presented from the least intense to the most intense one, in order to let people adapt to VR because most of them had never tried it before. The first ones received big success from the children — and we realized that it is quite challenging to make the usual VR helmets compatible with the small heads of the children!
All the Club members enjoyed taking part in this great event and had great feedback from visitors and exhibitors about their games. We hope that this kind of club retreat can be repeated in the coming years and would enjoy being part of it!
~ Julien Westphal, Tristan Perez, Jérémie Varet (M2 EdTech students)
European Citizen Science Forum : building the bridge between citizens and institutions
The European Citizen Science Forum (#ECSF) was organised by the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity, as part of the EU’s DITOs — Doing It Together science project. The Forum took place on Saturday, the 25th of March, at CRI in Paris. All different stakeholders -researchers, policy makers, teachers, entrepreneurs, citizens- were brought together around different tables and activities, sharing their expertise and proposing possible solutions on ethics, motivations, learning through research, infrastructure and support, data and open source tools, all issues arising in citizen science projects.
But what is Citizen Science? This concept refers to a socio-scientific movement that aims at empowering citizens to explore the world around them by measuring, playing or experimenting in order to address crucial challenges for a sustainable future. It is by “doing science together” (see twitter @TogetherSci) that we combine our resources and expertise so as to raise awareness and build common capacity for searching innovative and sustainable solutions.
The forum’s activities had been enriched by diverse expertises, talents and energy, brought by the invaluable CRI students and staff. For example, you can check the article of Liburn Jupolli (he’s a musician doing sharp experimentations as an M1 EdTech student) who organized a participatory concert thanks to phones and data during the Forum.
Last but not least, key-outcomes and recommendations resulting from the day have already started to be considered at a national and European level.
~ elina moraitopoulou, Alicia Mansilla (M1 EdTech students in internship at DITOs project with Imane Baïz)
Hackathon #FuturEdu17 : great incubator for students projects
Our students have many projects in their prolific minds. They always find people at CRI to get feedbacks about their ideas but sometimes this is also a good thing to take your project outside the home to expose your ideas to other people and, hopefully, to take your project a step further.
It was the move of Solene Barny (M2 EdTech) who participated in the the Hackathon FuturEdu organized by Learn Space, a new kind of educative hub founded by Svenia Busson and dedicated to supporting and bringing together learning innovators from various backgrounds. The project of Solene consists in a video platform that is willing to enable History teachers to access an intelligent database of movies for a simple use in class.
During the weekend organized at the Liberté Living Lab, a collaborative workspace for tech, civic & social innovation in the heart of Paris, she had the opportunity to work with 3 developers and to meet great people to help her on the business model.
Student involvement in the learning society is a major asset of our program
In the EdTech Master we talk a lot about “learning society” but it’s important for us that it doesn’t remain an abstract concept and that the students can actually experience this “learning society”.
Our curriculum give them the freedom to do it and we have the chance to have a great EdTech ecosystem that is under development in France (#FrenchEdTech) and this opens up many opportunities for our students !
We are looking for the students who will join our Master’s program next year !
Applications are currently open until June 5th. There is a form to fill in online and an interview with a jury at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity by mid-June. If you are interested by our Master’s program, check out the admission page online, follow our news here on Medium and on Twitter @OpenEdTech and please, do not hesitate to send us a message at masteredtech@cri-paris.org if you need more information !
