Education streaming service and sexism kit impress judges at EduHack

A YouTube-like streaming service for teaching materials and a feminism toolkit for teachers developed by students are some of the ideas that came out of Australia’s first education hackathon EduHack last weekend.

C.ed was the winner of the weekend, with its video streaming tool which allows teachers find resources, promising to offer easy access to short specific videos with advice on how to innovate their classes, as opposed to relying solely on physical meetups with other teachers.

Sexism Stings, a project developed by a team from Fitzroy High School students, the Fitzroy High School Feminist Collective, was highly commended and left judge Marina Paronetto, founder of PowerHouseHQ particularly impressed.

So much so that she reached out to Queens Collective, a new co-working space launching in Melbourne this week, to secure the Sexism Stings team a place and support to help get the project off the ground.

The Fitzroy High School Feminist Collective’s resource kit has already raised $12,118 of its $3000 goal on Kickstarter.

The project will see a resource kit including lesson plans, digital resources such as video clips made by the team speaking on issues central to gender equality and feminism, made available to schools around the nation.

“There’s still a lot of bad conversations to be had, difficult conversations and it’s not easy for teachers to bring the subject up,” Paronetto says of addressing sexism.

“This would create a resource, a tool kit to enable teachers to teach the subject a little bit more.

“It would really empower the female students that go through complicated situations.”

Paronetto says the passion of the team made an impact on her.

“I’m used to going to many startup events, to have women create something so amazing, at such a young age and with such determination, is very impressive,” she says.

“It’s not just about the subject; it’s about these young women and their place in the startup community.”

EduHack was organised by myEd and the Centre of New Public Education and involved students, teachers, developers and entrepreneurs to share ideas and help create solutions to tackle problems facing the Australian education sector.