2021 EdTechX Challenge - Final Event

Earlier this year, we launched the EdTechX Challenge— a virtual competition to source the best ideas that can transform the learning industry - and we were thrilled to have student teams from across the world with every region represented.

After the first round of submissions, we shortlisted 3 final teams with the help of our internal judging panel from IBIS Capital and MoocLab. These three teams were invited to pitch during our EdTechX Challenge event - each team had 5 minutes to outline their project before judges could ask a series of questions. The judges then deliberated to decide who would be first, second and third place and provided constructive feedback to the student teams about their decisions.

The EdTechX Challenge was based on the belief that bringing people together to collaboratively ideate — from students to industry leaders — would have the power to further connect the global learning community and catalyze innovation across the industry. The judges and the EdTechX team were so energized by the ideas and look forward to seeing how these ideas and projects continue to grow.

Watch the EdTechX Challenge Awards Ceremony below and learn more about the finalists, prizes and judges >>

Student Finalist Teams

Project 21 — 3rd Place

Skills Over Degrees and Collaborative & Community-Led Learning

Patrycja Wierzchałek and Victoria Stepanenko, both undergraduate students at Minerva Schools at KGI, presented Project 21— a curriculum of team-based gamified online challenge sessions led by a trained moderator to develop collaboration competencies and prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century workplace. Judges were impressed by the specificity of the program and noted the potential scalability of the curriculum for various audiences.

QuaesterBot — 2nd Place

Learning Management and Tools

Phaina Koncebovski, a Masters student at the University of Basel, took second place with her presentation of QuasterBot— a modern chatbot that understands and speaks natural language built on the principles of learning by teaching. The chatbot’s continual questions can help expose holes in a learner’s knowledge and allow them to delve deeper into different facets of the topic. The judges marked this project highly on its scalability and potential applications/ partnerships with learning institutions or other programs to supplement student learning.

LitSquad — 1st Place, 2021 EdTechX Challenge Winner

Collaborative and Community-led Learning

Asami Wright, an EMBA student at the Quantic School of Business and Technology, won 1st place with her pitch of LitSquad— a mobile-first game bringing teens together from around the globe in virtual literature circles to address the issues around a lack of reading stamina in teens and help them develop skills for the 21st century through a creative, gamified approach. Judges were impressed with this comprehensive solution and were excited by the novel approach to this critical issue in the next generation.

Challenge Prizes

A big thanks to our lead sponsor Google Cloud and our partners Minds Studio, Net2Work, Transcend Network for all prizes and incentives for this year’s Challenge. All our finalists will be receiving a prize package from these generous partners including:

Career coaching and mentorship sessions
Individual interviews for potential work opportunities with Edtech Experts and Learning Designers & Engineers
Summer Internship opportunities working in London or remotely
Exclusive updates & access to events and accelerators for entrepreneurs
Mentorship Round Table with a Googler for each team to discuss their project and career goals
Google merchandise, Google Cloud Credits and Qwiklabs training credits to expand knowledge of Google Cloud

Morgan Fryar | Cloud Onboarding Manager | Google Cloud

Morgan is a Cloud Onboarding Manager within our Customer Success Organization helping our enterprise customers to be successful on Google Cloud Platform. Prior to Google, Morgan worked at Deloitte where she worked with clients to transform their IT organizations. Focused on Cloud and IT strategy, she led initiatives to increase cloud adoption, infrastructure optimization and operational efficiency.

Morgan holds her BS in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, movies and music festivals.

Ryan Matsumoto | Google Cloud Developer Advocate | Google Cloud

Ryan works as a Developer Advocate at Google, where he engage with the external developer community interested in learning about Google Cloud. He is a member of the Online Content & Experiments team - we create amazing online content (e.g. videos, blog posts, podcasts, codelabs etc.) to help developers learn about Google Cloud. He is also very involved in our Education Outreach efforts (including tech talks, workshops, and hackathons) to help student developers learn about cloud computing

Charlie Stein-Cohen | Founder & CEO | Net2Work

Charlie Stein-Cohen is a tech entrepreneur and the founder of Net2Work and the Net2Work Foundation, a digital technology platform focused on youth career access and empowerment. Pursuit of Net2Work's mission has seen her work hand in hand with a number of London's inner-city schools and colleges. This work has been primarily geared towards setting up meaningful career preparation initiatives within their school curriculum.

She has generated broad support from UK businesses, government agencies in the effort. A regular public speaker about these topics, she is a passionate advocate of technological innovation as an agent of social impact and driver of greater career mobility amongst young people.

2021 EdTechX Challenge - Final Event

Student Finalist Teams

Challenge Prizes

Challenge Judges

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