Start a Team!
Anyone can start a technovation team. All you need is five high school girls, a safe place to meet, a laptop with internet and a smart phone (costs $50).
Here is a step-by-step Technovation Starter Kit that will guide you through the process of starting a Technovation team.
1. Download the Technovation Starter Kit. It includes everything about how to get involved as a mentor, teacher, or student.
2. Create a P2PU account. Upload a photo and indicate in your description whether you are looking for a mentor, etc. For example: “I am a teacher looking for a mentor in San Francisco, CA .” Be sure to edit your description once you are matched so that you do not receive any more requests.
3. Complete a quick registration form. If you are a:
4. Connect with mentors and teachers in your area. You will receive access to a Map Directory you can use after you register. Registered mentors and teachers appear on the Map Directory under their P2PU screen names.
Teams do not need a professional woman in tech/business to sign up or participate. Any adult (teacher, teen advisor, parent, etc.) that is willing to lead girls through the 12 weeks in the spring can serve as the team’s mentor. App Inventor and our curriculum are user-friendly and require no previous knowledge or experience. The five App Inventor tutorials in our fall course will teach you how to create an app in a matter of hours. Most professional women have not used App Inventor; the experience is often new for them too. You can collaborate virtually with other teams throughout the course on P2PU. You may arrange Google hangouts to troubleshoot with other teams or professional women or meet in person.
If you are a teacher and would like to partner with a professional woman in tech/business to mentor your teams, you can reach out on P2PU by messaging them, sharing information about your school’s location in your P2PU profile, or posting your request here. You may want to include information about how to get to your school to figure out logistics (e.g. “our school is 10 min north on the 6 train from midtown” or “we are close to Exit 34 off of I-4″). You can use an email template from our resources page to reach out to companies, universities, women organizations, and tech groups near you. You can also consider having a virtual mentor. Reminder: If you are having a mentor visit your school, please check with your school about any background checks necessary for the mentor before the program starts.
If you are a professional woman, you can reach out to teachers on P2PU by messaging them, sharing information about your work location in your profile, or posting your request here. If you have a space at your work where a team of five girls can meet and connect to WiFi, share that information with teachers as well. You can explore mentoring a team at a Girls Club, YMCA, Girl Scouts, or a group affiliated with a church or other entity. You can mentor a remote team virtually. Finally, you can offer support to teams by answering questions on P2PU during the 12-week course and meeting with team (virtually or in person) at times when they most need an expert’s opinion (e.g. when refining a pitch). Find your favorite way to contribute.
1. Recruit a team of five girls. Here are some tips on how you can do that.
2. Collect signed student applications, photo waiver and survey consent form. (You can access all forms here.)
3. Scan and email signed forms to technovationchallenge@iridescentlearning.org. Please include your school name in the file name that you send. Teams do not need a mentor to register.
4. Ask each team to create a unique Gmail account, a P2PU account, and complete a registration form to officially register for the challenge.
Visit our resources page for quick access to forms and documents or our FAQ for quick answers.
