Register for Technovation Girls today – and start bringing your vision for a better world to life.
Today’s the day! Registration for the new season of Technovation Girls opened today and we hope you’ll join us for another year of innovation and creative problem solving. We’re all facing a lot of uncertainties in our lives right now, and there’s a lot happening. But we take comfort in the incredible Technovation community of young people, families, mentors, volunteers and supporters. Your ideas for cleaner, safer, healthier communities motivate and inspire us year after year – as do the people who support your teams to help bring those ideas to life. We’re so glad and grateful that we get to work – and dream – alongside you.
We have some exciting announcements about this season, including updates to our judging rubric, submission guidelines, and awards structure, cool new curriculum units, and guidance about navigating COVID-19 and online learning.
COVID-19 and the 2021 Technovation Girls season
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) will continue to impact all of our lives into 2021, including the Technovation Girls 2020-2021 season. Once again this year, we will host World Summit virtually through an online platform, and all judging will happen virtually as well.
While we strongly encourage everyone to exercise extreme caution when deciding whether or not in-person meetings are a safe and viable option for your region, we recognize that the effects of the virus are different for every region. Please follow your local guidelines about in-person gatherings when setting your schedules this year. We also encourage referring to the World Health Organization recommendations on when or how to meet in person.
Finally, since many many regions are still encouraging limited in-person gatherings, Technovation created several new guidelines to make virtual collaboration more fun and more effective! Chapter Ambassadors and Club Ambassadors have access to resources for running virtual events and supporting teams virtually, and mentors can check out our virtual mentoring guidelines. Additionally, when students and mentors register, they will be asked new questions about their interests to help make virtual matching a better experience! We will also be adding more tools for students to build their teams and for mentors and teams to connect.
If you have any concerns please reach out to us at [email protected].
New Curriculum Units: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence!
This season we’re adding additional lessons to the curriculum to help teams who want to integrate AI tools into their apps. The lessons cover what Artificial intelligence is and how you can use it, as well as how to collect good data for AI models. Another lesson will cover the ethical use of artificial intelligence and help you decide if AI is right for your app and how to integrate AI elements using App Inventor and Thunkable.
We are finalizing the lessons and expect them to be available by the end of October.
Updated Judging Rubric and Submission Guidelines
Please note that we have updated the Technovation Girls Judging Rubric and Submission Guidelines for the 2021 season. Find details of those changes below:
Updated Submission Guidelines:
- Teams will be required to submit a demo video that shows how the app works technically. This video must be 1 minute or less in length. (This was not part of submissions for the 2020 season)
- Pitch videos now have a strict time limit of 3-4 minutes. Longer pitch videos will lose points in the judging rubric. We are also recommending that everyone include English subtitles for their videos.
- Instead of 2-6 screenshots of the app, we’re asking teams to submit 2-6 images that showcase their Technovation journey (see suggestions on Submission Guidelines page)
- Senior Division only: the Senior Division Business Plan can now be 5-10 pages in length
Changes to the Judging Rubric
We have tweaked our Judging Rubric for the 2021 season. Please review the updated rubric before you start building you app, while you are building you app, and before you submit.
- IDEATION
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- Teams are now expected to identify the potential impact of their app and its features on both direct and indirect users. (See this and this video for more details!)
- Teams will benefit from providing clear explanation of which Social Development Goal (SDG) their app aligns with
- Teams will receive more points for strongly explaining how their idea changed after user research and testing
- PITCH
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- No major changes from last season, but please note that we recommend a stronger focus on participants’ individual and team journeys, stories, and growth.
- TECHNICAL
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- On the User Experience and Design line – please note the increased focus on user testing and iterating
- On the Technical Learning line – please note new focus on each team sharing their technical learning (whatever technical learning the team was able to do at any time in the season)
- ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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- No major changes
- OVERALL IMPRESSION
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- No major changes, but if a team can show that some people are already using their app, it can be very powerful!
Competition & Awards Structure
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Technovation is keeping all judging online this year. This means that we will not be recognizing regional pitch events. However, we strongly encourage all chapters to hold local virtual (or in-person if your local situation and guidelines allow safely) celebration events at the end of the season.
Additionally, we have updated our Award Structure.
- We will recognize an additional 2 finalists – for a total of 12 finalist teams (6 finalists per division).
- Prize money will only go to students this year, not chapter ambassadors.
- We will be announcing additional special prizes (non-monetary) which will be open to ANY team, not only finalist or regional winner teams.
Our goal is to recognize more teams’ incredible efforts this season. We encourage everyone who participates in Technovation in any capacity to focus on their individual accomplishments, incredible resilience and determination rather than the competition. We truly believe that by entering this program, every single participant is already a winner.