Overview:
Students that participated in the Mockathon attended two workshops. One aimed towards helping groups come up with a unique idea and creating an application design for it. The second workshop aimed to help students pitch their ideas confidently and concisely. The program concluded with groups presenting their projects in front of a panel of judges.
Timeline:
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March 2018 - December 2018 (9 Months)
Tools:
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Google Universe (calendar, docs, sheets...)
Challenges:
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First time hosting and creating an event from scratch
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It was difficult to get professionals to agree to participant and sponsor because I was so young and creating something that I have never heard or seen before
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Finding a location was difficult. I ended up hosted the event at my high school, and it was hard to reserve that space because of push back from the administration
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Hackathons are sometimes 24 hours - I had 3 hours for this event!
Problem:
I sought out to increase interest in STEM among minority students. From circles around me, I discovered that it was hard to figure out where to start when trying to learn how to code or how to engage with STEM with no prior experience. I decided to create a Hackathon without the hacking - focusing on the design, creativity, and innovative problem-solving skills.
Outcomes:
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Earned a $500 grant from Girl Up Women in Science (WiSci) Camp that supports this project.
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90% of participants increased their knowledge or STEM opportunities and said they would participate in a real hackathon.
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Acquired sponsorships from Girl Up, World Learning, AECOM, Instagram, and Lyft.
Event Layout
Organization
Students were encouraged to sign up as teams, but those who did not come as a team were put in a group together.
Ideation / Sketching
Taught by Marissa Jennings, CEO and creator of her own app, Social Girlz, teams were led in a workshop to help them identify an issue in their community, and brainstorm how to fix it. Teams had the time to sketch out mockups for their app to be presented.
Pitch Perfect
A workshop on how to deliver the perfect pitch! Taught by Rhonda Davis Smith, a professional Speech Coach for AECOM, students were given keys for the presentation at the end of the event, but also to take with them beyond this event.
Presentation
Team had 3 minutes to pitch their designs and ideas (2 minutes of Q&A) one by one based on a rubric (shown below). While we graded our rubrics and deliberated as a panel of judges, students ate pizza! The top 3 teams won a prizes.