Children’s interactive playground – dot° scoops Innovate to Educate award
October 2006
Two students from the Royal College of Art in London, Clara Gaggero and Sabine Fekete, have scooped the Innovate to Educate Award with an interactive playground concept called dot°. Innovate to Educate, from Futurelab and supported by Cambridge Assessment and the BBC, is designed to encourage students of Higher Education to work with a teacher to focus their final year project on a novel digital resource to assist learning, in or out of school. The runner-up in this year’s awards is James Cook of University of Wales Institute in Cardiff (UWIC) with his project, schools:united, a social networking application for schools which embraces Web 2.0 on a global scale.
The winning entry, dot° was inspired by children’s ability to create games wherever they are. Clara and Sabine wanted to combine their imagination with the best available technology to match the level of engagement found in commercial games whilst encouraging physical education and exercise. dot° is an interactive playground that can be unrolled like a carpet. It uses interactive pressure sensors and lighting to illuminate games onto the surface of the playground, and can be easily installed onto any outside space. Different games can be uploaded and changed at any time.
Clara and Sabine win £1,500 each with an industry secondment with the BBC for three months in 2007. Their collaborating teacher will also receive £1,000 for their involvement in the project.
James Cook wins an industry secondment with assessment agency, Cambridge Assessment for his idea, schools:united. James’ project focused on an online social networking platform for education professionals combining networking capabilities and online collaborative tools, enabling users to submit content and knowledge as well as to collaborate and communicate with each other.
Steve Sayers, Strategy Director at Futurelab, said: “We are delighted with the number of entries we received for this year’s awards. The winning students have recognised how education can benefit from combining innovative ideas with the latest technology. The Innovate to Educate Award has enabled us to uncover new talent with the creative and technical skills to help transform education.”
For further information on the Innovate to Educate award go to www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/innovate_to_educate.