Twenty schools win the mSchools Student Awards 2019 with their digital projects

8 June, 2019

Barcelona, 08 June 2019– Twenty schools all over Catalonia today received the mSchools Student Awards 2019, which acknowledge young digital talent and encourage the creativity, abilities and skills required for the digital age. 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 sixth time, acknowledge digital projects devised by primary, secondary, higher secondary and vocational training students throughout the academic year.The final was held at La Farga de l’Hospitalet and involved over seven hundred and fifty 6 to 18 year-old students from Catalan schools, who presented their digital projects to over 2,000 people.Winners of the mSchools Student Awards 2019

• App Education: participants developed mobile apps to solve real-world problems based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As in enterprise projects, finalist teams defended their apps and business models by giving a 2-minute sales pitch. They were also assigned a stand at which to present their work to a jury and to attendees from the public.

Depending on their school year, winners in this category will have the chance to present their project at 4YFN, the world’s major fair for startups; to take part in a programme of the prestigious startups accelerator Founder Institute; or to attend the mSchools Bootcamp innovation campus.WINNERS: Institut Salas i Xandri (Sant Quirze del Vallès) with an app for recycling better; Institut Eugeni Xammar (Ametlla de Mar) with a solution for better canteen operation; Institut de Collbató with an app for democratically choosing aspects such as the sound of the school bell. The higher secondary category was won by Gymmate with an app for organising sports events (Institut Esteve Terradas de Cornellà).

• Mobile History Map (MHM): students were given a maximum of seven minutes to present their MHM projects from their stand. 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 receive a 360º camera and a set of 5 virtual reality headsets.

WINNERS: Ignasi Peraire (Mollerussa), with a map of the town’s social organisations; La Mitjana (Lleida), with a map of La Seu Vella cathedral; Institut Celrà, which developed a solidarity route; Institut La Valira (La Seu) with a map of mediaeval monasteries; CRP Reus with a map of the footprint left by the architect Pere Caselles in Reus; and Escola Abel Ferrater (La Selva del Camp) with an interactive route through the historic town centre.

• Scratch Challenge: the challenge that mSchools gave the youngest students resulted in the finalist teams solving a problem with Scratch in one and a half hours. This intuitive free software programming language helped them to come up with interactive stories, games and animations associated with inventions to help people.

The winners will participate in Scratch Lab Day, which will take place in July.WINNERS: La Portalada (Altafulla) ; Bernat Metge (El Prat) ; Mossèn Albert Vives (La Seu d’Urgell) ; Vedruna de Ripoll; Institut Sant Llorenç de Morunys and Institut Alpicat.John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA, Ltd; Carlos Grau, CEO of MWCapital and representatives of the Regional Government of Catalonia and L’Hospitalet City Council all took part in the awards ceremony. The Minister of Education, Josep Bargalló, and the Minister of Digital Policy and Public Administration, Jordi Puigneró, also learnt first-hand about the proposals from students.