by Dr. Maria Avgerinou

◉ How will we find and maintain friendships all over the world overcoming time-zone differences?

◉ How will we communicate no matter what different languages we speak?

◉ How will we spend time and share memories with our loved ones?

What Does A World After COVID-19 Look Like? ACS Athens Sweeps International Design Challenge Awards

by Dr. Maria D. Avgerinou, eLearning Consultant

Introduction The 20th ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) 2021 Conference invited K12 students from all over the world to participate in a Design Challenge titled “(Re)imagining a world after COVID-19”. Students were challenged to (re)imagine the post-pandemic world and submit their vision of how technology could help to make the world one they would like to live in.

Prof. Maria Roussou of the University of Athens Greece and ICD co-chair, noted that since our everyday life has changed so drastically due to the pandemic, we now need to build new, inclusive and creative ways to deal with the challenges we are facing. New technology-based solutions are needed, based on innovative and creative designs.

Questions or starting points for students to begin thinking about and set their creativity in motion, included: The 2021 Design Challenge initially received more than 65 proposals that were comprised of both text and visuals. Of these projects, 33 made it to finals by submitting a 1-minute video of the proposed idea and artifact or representational visuals. The final submissions originated from 5 different countries in 3 different continents. All videos were judged independently by a panel of international experts representing higher and secondary education. The following 6 evaluation criteria were used: relevance to conference theme • clarity of presentation • innovation • creativity • feasibility of implementation • effort.

The videos were also screened during the IDC 2021 conference, where more than 200 participants (out of 280 total delegates) had the opportunity to see and be impressed by them. The award ceremony took place online on June 30th.

The ACS Athens Winning Projects It is my pleasure to announce that three of the ACS Athens Elementary School (ES) projects submitted to the Design Challenge were awarded the top three places:

1st place (Odysseas & Sophia Kanavos for GrandApp),

2nd place (Afrodite Tselentis for The Hugger), and

3rd place (Akhil Asnani for the Smart Hoodie)

Further, another 9 ACS Athens submissions received Special Mentions under their respective categories:

COMMUNICATION: Kidbook (Papadoglou: ES) • Perspective in Relationships (Antypas, Lalaki, Sidereas, Drakou: MS)

HEALTH: Virus Watch (Miliou, Sonai Bibi: ES) • Health Care Hologram Watch (Pappas, Myers, Breuhaus, Mihailidi: ES) • The Medical Hero (Stylopoulos: ES)

TRANSPORTATION: The Bicycle Car (Filippos , Loukas, Nefeli: ES/4th Grade)

WELL-BEING/EMPATHY: The Kidnonos Project (Averoff, Giannaki, Kanavos O., Kanavos S., Sarafis: ES)

COMMUNICATION WITH ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES: Hologram Play (Mitrelia, Dennery, Z. and I. Solomou: ES)

EMPLOYMENT: Super Jobs (Giannaki, Kalliolias: ES)

All successful projects have received a printed certificate. In addition, the three top projects have received a prize, sponsored by Osmo®, a leading educational technology company the products of which we also utilize at the Elementary School at ACS Athens.

Design Thinking: A Mindset and a Way to Be! Having being responsible since 2017 for the professional development of the ES faculty on Design Thinking (DT) while presenting and publishing widely ACS Athens-created, model DT projects such as Hug-APaw (2017 with Ms Tsoukia) and The Coding Maestros (2018, 2021 with Ms Apostolou), it is indeed rewarding to see that our efforts to formally develop the DT skills of the teachers and further of their students have been successful both at the ES and the MS levels.

I am confident that the school will continue to work in the same vein and with the same vision. DT is one of the critical skills according to the 21st century education frameworks. It is thus extremely important that a DT thread from the ES through the MS and all the way to the Incubator, the STEAM and the Artificial Intelligence initiatives remains active, constructive, and visible to the ACS Athens learning community and beyond.

Congratulations to our students!! Keep up the great work!!