Fundación Telefónica Mexico recognises young developers of educational apps

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Fundación Telefónica, with the support of Wayra, Qualcomm, Mozilla, IBM, Sony and Microsoft, recognized the winners of the APPS Award for the development of educational apps that will help teachers, parents and anyone else interested in education to improve subjects such as Math, Physics and Spanish, amongst other core curricular subjects.

Fundación Telefónica, with the support of Wayra, Qualcomm, Mozilla, IBM, Sony and Microsoft, recognized the winners of the APPS Award for the development of educational apps that will help teachers, parents and anyone else interested in education to improve subjects such as Math, Physics and Spanish, amongst other core curricular subjects.

Entries were invited between 17 May and 27 September from young people aged between 18 and 25 and the winners of the top three places were as follows:

– First prize: App: Bingo Language 2, developed by Eduardo Marín Ramírez. This is an app for tablets with an Android OS which is designed to help with language learning and subjects such as Biology, Anatomy and History, amongst others. The winner will receive $100,000 pesos as well as the chance to have his app developed and promoted free of charge in the 14 Latin American nations where Fundación Telefónica operates.

– Second prize: Mathfoot, developed by Marco Antonio Contreras Cruz. This app is designed to pose arithmetic challenges on three levels of difficulty and is aimed at primary school pupils. The winner will receive $80,000 pesos.

– Third prize: Papapp, developed by the Ticatecs team. The aim of this app is to promote the subjects in the National General Education Test by means of a random quiz game. The prize is a trip to one of Qualcomm’s offices in Latin America.

Three special commendations were also given for the Kunic app by Kimberly Arévalo, the Prehispanic app by Cassandra Pratt and the Animal Learning app by Eduardo Segundo.

The APPS Award received 10,084 queries during the application period and a total of 72 projects involving 221 participants were submitted, of which nine projects were chosen as semi-finalists. Young people from 19 cities around the country took part, mostly from Estado de México, Distrito Federal, Sonora and Puebla.

The jury was made up of experts in innovation, technology and education and members of the abovementioned companies. The most important factors taken into consideration for the final evaluation were technical factors such as the quality of components, the visual environment, clarity, consistency, innovation and creativity, amongst others; while an appraisal of the educational aspects was also made, considering content, language, organization, app-user interaction, the build-up of knowledge and the evaluation system, amongst others.

Fundación Telefónica, a corporate entity of Telefónica, which in Mexico manages the commercial brand Movistar, first started this competition in Spain in 2013. Last year it was introduced in Venezuela and in view of its success was launched this year in Mexico. The competition is part of Fundación Telefónica’s goal to create innovative educational projects that are useful to public education teachers and consequently will encourage the development of technological skills among students. In addition, the aim is to foster a digital culture among young Mexicans.

Fundación Telefónica Mexico recognises young developers of educational apps
Fundación Telefónica Mexico recognises young developers of educational apps