Coláiste Chiaráin in Croom, Co Limerick is celebrating after winning a Dragons’ Den-like competition at the EXCITED Digital Learning Festival for its QuickRevise fun revision tool.
The competition had pitted four schools from Limerick, Meath, Donegal and Dublin against each other to create and pitch a business idea for a new innovation using technology in the classroom to a panel of watchful judges.
After much deliberation from the judges, it was decided that the winning idea was QuickRevise.ie, a revision tool that uses a deck of cards containing questions on one side and answers on the reverse, with a QR code that links to more information on the website quickrevise.ie.
The team had also built an app that scans the QR code to bring students to the exact online resource, with each pack of cards covering an entire subject area, and it could one day be expanded to cover areas like first aid, according to the Coláiste Chiaráin team.
The team estimated it would make a profit of €20,000 in its first year.
The other participating schools, including Cloughfin National School in Lifford, Co Donegal; Scoil Fhursa in Coolock, Dublin and St Michael’s Loreto Secondary School, Navan, Co Meath, were all awarded prizes in different categories.
Cloughfin pitched GoGrip, a pencil grip to help teach students how to hold a pencil, which slides over a regular pencil and matches the exact contour for the correct holding of a pencil with special in-built dents.
Scoil Fhursa pitched Handband, a digital bracelet replacement for the roll book and a virtual wallet.
Meanwhile, St Michael’s from Navan developed Bringing Education to All (BETA), a home schooling and virtual tours platform that can be accessed on all devices from laptops to Google Glass.
Unperturbed by not winning, the St Michael’s team plans to use crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise €5,000 and will be targeting schools, exhibition spaces like the Science Gallery and the home-schooling audience.
