Updated Technovation Girls curriculum coming to computer screens in January 2020!
The 2020 season of Technovation Girls will feature an updated curriculum set to hit the website in January! The revised curriculum covers still covers four key categories – ideation, coding, entrepreneurship and pitching, but units have been revised and split up into shorter lessons that are easier for teams to work through. We’ve also updated the content with examples from 3 of our 5 accepted languages – Thunkable and App Inventor. We are excited to provide these references for teams to consult for additional guidance as they solve a problem in their community.
In particular, our lessons on ideation (brainstorming and selecting a community problem to address) have been refreshed to help teams select compelling problems to solve – and to explain why those problems matter to them personally. This foundational step is hard even for professionals to do, so we’ve restructured the units into more manageable steps. We’ve also re-arranged lessons so that teams work on ideation and marketing lessons at the same time, and begin market research earlier in the season, which will allow teams to improve their ideas if their research turns up information that requires teams to re-work their original idea.
You’ll notice that lesson names are more descriptive, to help teams quickly find the lessons that are most relevant to their individual work if they need to.
We’ve also made the coding lessons more digestible, and provided additional resources and instructions for teams choosing to use Thunkable to build their app alongside existing guides for MIT App Inventor.
Additionally, in keeping with updated submission guidelines, we’ve updated our lessons on pitching, and teams will only be submitting 1 video this year to the competition. This video will focus on the technical elements of their app, as well as their ideation process, the team’s learning journey, and how their app will impact their community. You can learn more about elements of pitching in the relevant lessons and how to make a great video here.
We are putting the final touches on the curriculum through the end of the year and uploading it to technovationchallenge.org, but all units will be live for the official start of the season in January. You must be registered for Technovation Girls in order to access the lessons.
New: Accepted Programming Languages
Please note that as of 2020, we will only accept apps coded in Thunkable, App Inventor, Thunkable Classic, Swift, or Java. We are limiting the languages accepted for competition to make judging more equitable.
New: Submission Guidelines
While the curriculum is still covering the same core content as in previous years, in 2020, we will be using new submission guidelines (so if you’ve participated before, be sure to review the new guidelines!). In 2020, submission materials include:
- a 3-5 minute pitch video
- an app name and 100-word description,
- a team photo and bio
- their source code
- Two screenshots of their app [Senior Division] 5-page business plan, and
- [Teams attending a live pitch event] will submit a slide deck for their pitch presentation.
About the Legacy Curriculum
Teams can still use the older Technovation Girls curriculum used from 2017 to 2018, but we strongly encourage all teams to use the updated curriculum. The material covered is similar but the new curriculum better aligns to the submission guidelines, has increased focus on elements judges will be looking for, and has been updated to be easier to use. We believe teams will have an all-around better experience if they use the new curriculum, but it is not mandatory.