EduHack is a collaboration project between Estonian, Spanish, Latvian, Italian, Irish and Turkish partners that brings together expertise from universities, science museums, local youth work organizations, IT, communication and international staff training in order to diversify and innovate the field of education. The overall objective of EduHack is to co-develop easy-to-use tools for educational institutions or other interested parties on how to organize an Education Innovation Hackathon as and resourceful and creative way to innovate education. Furthermore, provide opportunities to collaborate on a local and international level and test or use the ideas, prototypes, materials developed during different hackathons in other countries. Methodology of EduHack aims to move beyond closed innovation to co-innovation, embedding this practice in co-designing the tools for organizing Education Innovation Hackathons. This will be achieved by establishing multi-stakeholder Education Innovation Hubs in each partner country. The Hubs bring together the expertise from local education field, innovation centres, universities, industry, schools, IT, etc. Work in these Hubs includes local meetings and workshops and two intense short-term international mutual-learning and exchanging workshops to gather the necessary input for the design of the hackathon format as well as for the most crucial issues that can be “hacked” during four different hackathons that take place in partner countries. Education Innovation Hackathons take place in Latvia, Estonia, Turkey and Spain and they are organised to test and improve the tools that will be developed for schools for hacking education. All the necessary materials on how to organize an Education Innovation Hackathon will be launched via online platform. This platform is be the main source for potential hackathon organisers as well as opportunity for cross-sectoral and international collaboration and innovation in education. An Education Innovation HackDay will also take place during the project to maximize the impact of the developed tools, to disseminate the results on an international level as well as to exchange experiences and communicate the project to a wider audience through workshops and interactive sessions. This will take place in Ireland and the aim is to foster creativity and facilitate discussion amongst a diverse group of people, analyses issues in education in different countries and contexts, provide opportunities for networking and brings together people to share ideas and experiences. By the end of the project, a set of final (digital) guidelines and other tools (e.g. multimedia tools, checklists, templates, description of methodology) will be co-developed and shared with the public via online Education Hack Tools platform. These tools will provide a unique way of creative problem solving e.g. “hacking” particularly meant for education.
The overall project objective was to exchange good practices and through a hackathon format co-innovate services, products, gadgets etc. for schools. In addition, we aimed to develop materials and guidelines for schools (and other relevant institutions) on how to use the hackathon format to find solutions for various problems in the education involving other industries as well.
Education hackathons are gaining popularity but sources that offer technical information and support for organizers as well as opportunities for innovation in an international and cross-sectoral level are not found. EduHack aimed to ease this problem by launching an online platform with necessary tools and information for cross-sectoral collaboration and innovation in education through the hackathon format as well as piloting cross-sectoral education hackathons in the partner countries.