January 10, 2023—Calling girls all over the world—today is the official kickoff for the 2023 Technovation Girls season! We need your ideas to build a better world!
Join the Technovation Girls program this year and learn how to build technology that will change your community. Create a prototype for an app, or an AI-powered tool that solves a real world problem like climate change, contaminated water, food scarcity, elder abuse, domestic violence, medical misinformation…girls who participated in Technovation Girls have addressed all these problems and thousands more.
There are endless problems to solve—but we know you have thoughts about how to solve lots of them. Technovation Girls will help you make those thoughts a reality.
- You’ll learn the business skills you’ll need to actually take your app to market.
- You’ll work with a team of other girls (in your community or in a country across the world—it’s up to you!) and have the support of a Mentor.
- Our global network of Chapters and Clubs is also ready to support you locally.
At the end of the season in April, you’ll submit your project to a global competition and receive feedback from impressive volunteer judges about what’s working great, and where there’s room for improvement. Learn more and sign up today.
Adults, we need you too!
If you’re over the age of 18 and want to help girls step into their roles as leaders and entrepreneurs, join Technovation Girls as a volunteer mentor, and help girls develop confidence, technical skills, and leadership abilities. You do not need to work in a technical field to be a mentor—you just need to be willing to say “I don’t know, let’s find out together” when it comes to solving technical issues. (Technovation also offers Live Classes for teams to get additional support on their projects!)
You’ll help girls most by believing in them, encouraging them, and helping them with skills like project and time management. You can work with a team local to you, or be matched with a team from another region. Learn more and sign up today.
What’s New for Technovation Girls in 2023
Curriculum Improvements:
Our Junior and Senior Division curriculum has a new look! This updated curriculum is more interactive, more streamlined, and has additional activities to guide teams through their projects.
- Translations. Technovation is proud to offer translations in the following languages for the 2022-2023 season: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Georgian, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, German. These translations will be available starting later in January (we’re translating and reviewing them as fast as we can!) A giant thanks to all the volunteers who have helped to complete the translations this season!
- Climate-Focused Content. Technovation is offering additional content for teams addressing climate-related issues. This content has been co-created by Technovation’s curriculum team and Technovation Alumnae who are working on climate-focused apps (some of which will be released on the App and Google Play store). The Alumnae are being supported by star mentors Natalie Lao at the App Inventor foundation, Dave Wolber from Thunkable, and Mark Friedman, the cofounder of MIT App Inventor.These new climate units will help teams identify those parts of climate problems that are powerful to attack from any community, and ways the solution can be adapted to similar situations or issues. These units will help teams develop ideas that go beyond recycling or planting trees and are informed by powerful research and work of community organizations.The units will also provide detailed tech support for the journey of planning, building specific features, and ideally publishing the app on the app store. The Climate Units are being reviewed and uploaded to the website, and will be available later this month!
- AI Lessons. The Technovation Girls curriculum incorporates lessons about AI throughout the entire program. These units introduce AI, how it works, and how girls can use AI tools in their projects.Technovation is also currently in the process of adding additional information about how teams can use ChatGPT ethically to help brainstorm ideas for problems to solve. We will offer adult volunteers online tutorials or workshops on how to use ChatGPT as well as how to support students to use it fairly and effectively.
Program Deliverables
As part of their project submissions, teams are asked to create two videos—a pitch video, and a video showing how their app works (previously called a demo video). This year teams will submit a more technical videoexplaining how they built their project. This will emphasize the importance of the coding and technical aspects of their project, rather than just a demo that might be more flash than substance.
New Mentor Curriculum
Technovation is proud to introduce our new Mentor Curriculum! Developed to provide more detailed support to Mentors, the new Mentor Curriculum is aligned to the student curriculum, but provides planning advice and guidance to mentors to help their teams successfully complete the program.
Of particular use will be the fillable agenda templates for each group meeting. Mentors can complete and customize these agendas to plan out their sessions and activities. This project management and prioritization tool will hopefully address common pain points mentors (and students!) have expressed to the Technovation staff.
Technovation will also host mentor office hours to provide additional support. This is a great space for mentors to ask questions they have that are better suited for a short chat than email.
Community
Just as important as the curriculum is the Technovation community. This year Technovation is prioritizing connection and support for volunteers as students through live online classes, dedicated staff support for Club Ambassadors, additional resources and opportunities for Chapter Ambassadors, and new mentor materials.
Events
Technovation is also excited to announce that in-person Regional Pitch Events are back this year. Regional Pitch Events allow teams to gather together in-person in their Chapters/Regions to meet each other, pitch their ideas, and celebrate what they’ve learned. (Online judging will still be available for those teams who cannot attend a Regional Pitch Event, and as in previous years, the semifinal round of judging will happen online, and the final round of judging will happen at World Summit).