Next Up: When adults are impressed by fourteen-year-olds
Yesterday, Thursday, Next Up Stockholm 2014 was decided, with a group of enthusiastic students from Birkaskolan in Ekerö as the final winners. In competition with eight other schools, they had made two presentations in the morning of the cases they had been working on since the start of the spring semester: How to guarantee security at a giant public event (Ericsson) and How to create a game that bridges the generations (King).
Together with Ärvinge and Björkeby schools, they went through to the online final, where they came out on top. The final case, which was handed out on site and for which the teams had two hours to develop a solution, had the theme of how to improve language learning in the 2020s with the help of so-called wearable technologies (i.e. the future equivalent of Google Glass). Not only did the Birka students make a sharp presentation, they also had time to make a short film where they sold the product EduVision (cf. link above, 38 min into the film).
So earlier in the day, all the schools had made two presentations each, to five different panels of judges, one for each case. Apart from a certain logistical hassle (where we received invaluable help from hosts from YBC and SSIS high schools - thank you for that!), I felt some concern that these tanned and time-pressed jury members I had attracted there would feel that they had spent time on something that would turn out to be far below their level. Not so - if there was anything that left as big an impression on me as the excited students, it was the stunned reactions of just about every adult, taken aback by all the creatively developed and skillfully presented solutions.
In parallel, we had an Instagram competition, sponsored by Urbanears, where the schools that posted the picture on Instagram that best fulfills Next Up's idea would receive class sets of Urbanears headphones. Husbygårdsskolan won, with Eklidens skola as runner-up. No victory for Birkaskolan here, but one of the pictures they posted may explain better than others why they won the main competition - see below!
A huge thank you to all the students, schools and partners who contributed to a successful event!