The amount of time your students are spending using different apps on their phone can add up to a full time job. What if they started learning the skills to be the creators of apps instead of just using them? What if those apps were about things that mattered, and students could learn about social entrepreneurship? What if your students could be creators of social change through apps that they make? That’s the idea behind MAD about Mattering.
MAD about Mattering is a social initiative lead by MAD-learn and Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis with the help and partnership to encourage and empower students to use compassion-driven innovation and collaborative teamwork to develop mobile apps that matter.
This project combines the work and passion of long-time technology director and educator Vicki Davis and the creative genius of MAD-learn, the creators of MAD-learn, a mobile app development curriculum.
Our goal is to ensure that students know and understand the power of the technology that they’re using each day, and how they can be empowered to create technology that actually matters, and can envision strategies to help the world. That’s why we use compassion-driven innovation and collaborative teamwork to develop apps that matter. We want to be able to connect students with the same passion to think of apps that can change the world and spark new life into a movement.
Cohorts of 4-5 classrooms from all over will be formed, and the students from each classroom will brainstorm about app ideas that match this year’s theme: “What makes your heart beat?” The most common ideas will be adopted by teams and students from different classrooms and schools will create and app together about their topic. Students will work online asynchronously to create an app and a pitch to present at the MAD-shark tank in May 2017.
If this sounds like something you’re interested in bringing to your classroom, click here to check out the website and sign up for more information. Be sure to follow our journey on Twitter by following @MADlearn or by checking out the hashtag #appsthatmatter!