How to create dozens of open learning apps in 24 hours 🚀
bitmark Association unites global community to “Hack for Open Education” and hosted a successful hackathon in Bern, Switzerland, as well as online – bringing together more than 100 global talents from over 20 different countries to tackle the education accessibility challenge: “Create an open Language Learning App based on bitmark in a Day”.
The overriding goal of the Hackathon was to create open, innovative learning solutions based on the open content-first standard “bitmark” that make digital learning content more accessible.
Developers, teachers and other education enthusiasts participated from all over the world, including Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, demonstrating the global reach and impact of bitmark.
The participants worked tirelessly to develop innovative solutions leveraging bitmark to create new possibilities for education. All created open language learning solutions will be available as open-source.
The Winners
The winning teams were chosen by a high-profile jury consisting of Uwe Erpel (Head of EdTech Engineering at Cornelsen Verlag), Julia Pichler (Head of EdTech Austria) and Julia Steger (Chief Operating Officer at Eduvation) as well as, Susanne Grassmann (Educator), Philippe Pointet (bitmark Association), Margareta Sailer (HR Consultant for Tesla & Blackberry) and Polly Watt (Higher Education Expert).
The winning solution for the "Most Impactful Solution" award is "Word Warrior," an AI-based student-centered application designed to cater to diverse backgrounds, taking into account cultural and ethnological characteristics.
1. The 'Most Innovative Solution' goes to 'Julia', a personalized learning experience for learners. Based on the learner's individual interests and an autodidact concept-template, we use ChatGPT to create an interactive learning unit in the bitmark format..
2. The 'Most Creative Solution' goes to ‘Upucate/Explorer’, a learning app based on 360-images where you learn a language while exploring places.
3. The 'Audience Award' chosen via a poll by the audience, goes to Ghana: ' Baaba', a mobile first app with gamified approaches to learn languages by fully immersing learners via their cognition, affective, and psychomotor.
After 24 hours of non-stop coding and development, the teams presented their innovative language-learning apps to a panel of judges in a public Youtube live stream.
“We are inspired and touched to see such a large group of people come together from all around the world to tackle this important challenge.
The solutions that were developed have the potential to make a real difference in people’s lives by providing greater access to digital learning content, which is a fundamental right for all.
All teams have done a tremendous job and can be very proud of themselves just as I am proud of them.”
Voices of the participants
“I was impressed by the diversity of participants, including people of all ages and backgrounds — some were friends, others family members, still others colleagues or complete strangers to each other” — Andrea Frei, Bern
“We really learnt a lot about the bitmark and Taskbase ecosystem, and we hope to use them to make education even more accessible.” — Kelvin Fosu, Ghana
“I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for the opportunity to work with your team on developing a multilingual learning app. It was an incredible experience that I will always remember and cherish. Our collaboration has resulted in a learning app that will help people all around the world gain access to quality educational resources in a variety of languages.” — Miguel Augusto Duque Peluzzo, Venezuela.
“Participating in this hackathon by bitmark Association taught me one major thing: Together, we can push boundaries, live change, and make education more accessible. Thank you so much for the unique experience — despite all the tiredness, I still have a smile on my face.” — Michele Heller, Finland.
“At the bitmark Hackathon I could break the ice, mentor and observe many outstanding solutions for education.” Iwona Fluda, Switzerland.
“Had such fun working on this at the weekend. Looking forward to bitmark’s future hackathons.” Iona Douglas, Barcelona.
“This was amazing, guys! Next time I will make sure to participate on site for an enhanced experience. Either way, it was great! Happy to have taken part in this. I will keep an eye on bitmark! Congrats to everyone! All the teams were amazing, honestly! ❤️” — Livia Untaru, Rumänien.
“My deepest appreciation to Lisa-Maria Centeno, Managing Director at Bitmark Association, and the entire bitmark organization for providing the platform and opportunity for us to showcase our skills and contribute to such a worthy cause. We are grateful for the support and encouragement we received from the organizers throughout the event.” — Prescott Nyamekye, Ghana.
“Even though we didn’t win, we loved working on the project, which aligned with Upskyld’s development and mission. Thanks so much to the guys who gave up their weekend to work on a good cause and interesting project.” — Maria Vechere, France.
“What an amazing hackathon with so many people passionate about making education more accessible! A big thank you to the bitmark and the organization team” — Jonas Nöhl, Germany.
About the bitmark standard and the bitmark Association:
bitmark is the world’s only open-source, content-first data standard to create interactive digital learning content. By providing a standard, a common ground, for learning content, bitmark increases the interoperability for the edtech world, eliminates lock-ins of learning content and thus makes digital learning content finally accessible.
The bitmark Association is a non-profit organization committed to promoting the bitmark standard with the overriding goal to democratize learning and close the global education gap. This hackathon is just one example of how they are achieving this goal.