Mataró will host, this Friday and this Saturday, the fifth edition of EdHack, a community laboratory for social transformation promoted by the Fundació Bofill, which promotes new alliances between people and entities in the community to propose solutions to educational challenges.
The Mataró edition, at the GEM school, has focused on digital equity. “It is the ideal space to turn educational digitalization into a real opportunity for everyone, where we want to create concrete proposals,” says the foundation. It refers to approaches that generate “technological proposals that connect people, foster creativity and improve learning, that involve all community and educational actors, including students, that celebrate diversity as a source of innovation and that guarantee the real social transformation, not just digital access.”
Héctor Gardó, director of the digital equity strategy at the Bofill Foundation, assures that digital equity has been chosen this year "because it is a current topic and a challenge that really worries and occupies educational communities."
Gardó highlights that the foundation seeks for the challenge to also respond to the concerns of the city in which the EdHack is held. "This year in digital equity, he affirms, we are in the midst of launching the Foundation's project. We believe that all the educational digitalization that is being done is something that is worrying, that we need to promote debate, share good practices, also look for critical spaces where families and teachers can exchange their opinion.
We have also found this concern _he adds_ in Mataró, in the City Hall, in schools and other entities. There has been a coincidence between something that was worrying and that they wanted to lead in the city with an issue that we have been leading since the foundation.
The purpose is to convert Mataró into a digital equity ecosystem. Two itineraries have been planned: digital well-being and sustainable entrepreneurship. Hacker teams will be able to choose the challenge that best fits their motivations and experiences.
The first itinerary, focused on well-being, includes three challenges: the first questions how artificial intelligence can improve the ways of teaching and learning. The second seeks answers to promote more responsible and critical uses of educational technologies. The third proposes how to promote digitalization that is a source of opportunities for everyone.
The second itinerary, aimed at encouraging social entrepreneurship, proposes the use of responsible and sustainable local commerce and industry, the improvement of education through digital solutions that are pedagogically rich and accessible to everyone and digital feminisms and closing social gaps. from community leadership.
Marco Rodríguez, professor and researcher at TecnoCampus UPF, Ismael Hernández Adell, professor of Business Administration and Innovation Management at TecnoCampus; Carme Rovira Riera, pedagogue, master in multimedia applications and responsible for educational and social innovation at the Teaching Campus of Sant Joan de Déu and Anna Ramis, university teacher trainer are some of the mentors.
The EdHack in other editions, the one in Raval (Barcelona), in Girona, Tàrrega (Lleida) or Reus (Tarragona) has focused on topics such as the fight against school dropouts, the connection between education and culture or the transformation of public space in an environment of leisure, culture and learning.
