Event: Apps for Philly Education 2014

The Apps for Philly Education Hackathon will bring together developers, designers, students, teachers and more to build applications designed for use in education from May 2 to May 4 at Impact Hub and the Science Leadership Academy. The hackathon is organized by Code for Philly, Jarv.us, Slate, and Philly EdTech meetup.

“It’s basically an opportunity for developers, designers, creative folks, marketers, anyone in the space that’s trying to work on technology in schools to come together and spend one weekend to build as much as you possibly can and get it into the hands of real teachers and real students,” co-organizer Christian Kunkel said.

Kunkel added that people often have the misconception that hackathons only need developers, but projects are most successful if they incorporate team members from different backgrounds.

“Often what gives the project longer legs is having a good design on the front end, having good marketing to support it and having good channels to be able to push it out, and so we need people in all of those areas,” Kunkel said. He added that teachers and students are encouraged to show up to be testers and also to join in on the teams developing apps over the weekend.

“We definitely are encouraging students and teachers to attend,” Kunkel said. “We’ve always been very open to that, but we’re deliberately this year asking more students and teachers to attend.”

The hackathon will start on Friday with a kick-off at Impact Hub which will give people the opportunity to suggest ideas, brainstorm and then try to recruit their teams. The app development part of the event will take place at Science Leadership Academy on Saturday and Sunday.

Teams will have the opportunity to develop software using any technology they choose, but they will have access to the Slate platform. Slate is an open-source infrastructure that ties together a wide range of education tools and data, which Science Leadership Academy and other schools in Philadelphia currently use. Developers will be present to guide participants through Slate.

This is the third education hackathon organized by the team. GreenSTEM Network, a project that gives students in the Philadelphia-area schools the ability to monitor data from gardens, green roofs, and more, came out of last year’s hackathon.

When: May 2 to May 4
Where: Impact Hub on May 2, Science Leadership Academy May 3- May4
Cost: $10, includes registration, shirt, and meals
Register: philadelphiastreets.com/psc-registration/fe-psc-event-volunteer-map.php

(Image via Apps 4 Philly Education)