Apps to help to control diabetes or to find lost pets are among the winners of the mSchools Student Awards 2020

• Primary, secondary, higher secondary and vocational training students competed in 2 categories (App Education and Mobile History Map) with projects finished remotely and under lockdown).
• The contest run by mSchools, a programme promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona in collaboration with the Regional Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Hall and GSMA, challenges students to become digital entrepreneurs.

17 June, 2020

Barcelona, 17 June 2020– This afternoon saw the presentation of the mSchools Student Awards 2020, which recognise young digital talent and promote the creativity, skills and abilities necessary in the digital era. The prizes are awarded by the mSchools programme, which is promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) in collaboration with the Regional Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Hall and GSMA. The awards, which were issued for the seventh time, acknowledge digital projects devised by primary, secondary, higher secondary and vocational training students throughout the academic year.

Students from 6 to 18 years old submitted a total of 100 entries for the awards in two categories: App Education and Mobile History Map. What is different about the mSchools Student Awards this year is that the projects were undertaken during lockdown, with students and teachers in different places and working remotely.

Winners of the mSchools Student Awards 2020

App Education: Participants developed mobile apps to solve real-world problems based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In this category, each member of the winning teams will receive a state-of-the-art  Android tablet.

The winners were:

• Maristes Rubí (Rubí), with an app that uses geolocation to reunite lost pets with their owners.
• LFG – Bon Soleil (Gavà), with an app that helps disabled people to move around the city more comfortably.
• Institut Ernest Lluch (Barcelona), with a mobile app that suggests cooking recipes to match scanned ingredients.
• In the higher-secondary category, the winner was Diabetes Control&Automation, an app to help anyone with diabetes (Institut Esteve Terradas i Illa from Cornellà).

Mobile History Map (MHM): This is a georeferencing platform and app that encourages project work and service-learning. MHM improves students’ digital skills by helping them to create multi-format contents associated with their surroundings and to share them with the public at large. Winning schools will receive a 360º camera and a set of 5 virtual reality headsets. All twelve finalists will, moreover, be invited to take part at a 3D model creation workshop, with the collaboration of the Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage.

The winners were:

• Escola Minyons d’Urgell (Fondarella), with a game of clues about the geolocated flora and fauna of Fondarella.
• Institut Escola Mare de Déu del Portal (Batea), with a compilation of oral history aimed at people who were caught in the line of fire in their childhoods during the Civil War.
• CFA Bon Pastor adult education centre (Barcelona), with an interactive map that covers the most iconic sites of the Bon Pastor district in order to help to understand its history.
• Escola Vedruna (Ripoll) deserves a special mention for its project based on digitalising and geolocating the legends of towns of different schools in Catalonia, from the regions of Baix Camp to La Cerdanya.

The presentation of awards was attended by John Hoffman, CEO and Director of GSMA; Carlos Grau, CEO of Mobile World Capital Barcelona; and Jordi Puigneró, Minister for Digital Policy and Public Administration.