Andrea App has been the winner in the second edition of the Madrid City Council accelerator “La Nave”, being chosen the best startup in the education category (edTech). The winners of this second edition, in which about 35 projects from different sectors participated, were chosen by a professional jury after the presentations that those responsible for each project made at the LN Meeting 2020 , an online event that took place on June 30, 2020 as the culmination of this second acceleration program launched by La Nave.
A jury made up of professionals from Madrid in Motion, Naturgy, Banco Santander, EIT Health, Ramón y Cajal Institute for Health Research, ClarkeModet, Mañana, ENISA, Tapp Water, Empieza por Educar, ICADE and IBM Garage; has been in charge of determining which projects were worthy of winning.
In the edTech category, the jury was made up of Beatriz Morilla, CEO of Empieza por Educar, Begoña Pérez de Lema, Head of Marketing and Comms of ICADE Business School, Julián Martín, professor, director of professional training and member of the steering committee from Fundación Tomillo, and Samuel Sierra, IBM Cloud Garage Practice Manager.
“Andrea App has been the winning startup of La Nave's second acceleration program in the edTech category.”
The innovative nature, the viability of the project, its scalability and the exposure during the pitch, have been the main elements that have made Change The Block, in the category of smart cities; Elur, in eHealth; Biren in sustainability, bioeconomy and circular economy; and Andrea at edTech, in the winning projects of the second edition of La Nave’s acceleration program.
Raúl Ortiz, partner at Nectar and director of Andrea, was in charge of defending the project at the LN Meeting with which La Nave concluded its second acceleration program at the end of June. “It is very relevant to have won this program of acceleration in the education vertical. The support of a professional jury such as the one that has evaluated the different proposals reaffirms the potential of Andrea app in the education sector, for various reasons such as its scalability and innovative nature.”
Education experts also endorse Andrea App at the 1st School Mediation and New Technologies Conference
A few days after obtaining this recognition, the digital agency Nectar organized, together with the accelerator La Nave and the Madrid City Council, the I Conference on School Mediation and New Technologies. An online meeting that has brought together different experts in education and school mediation, who have endorsed the use of technological tools such as the Andrea app to prevent bullying in a post-Covid19 era where distance education can be a key factor.
In this sense, all the professionals who have participated in the conference have assumed that a new era is opening in education where the use of technologies will multiply, mainly due to the obligation to keep distance for health reasons. For this reason, they have valued the existence of tools such as the Andrea app that allows, through the use of technology, to communicate with teachers and alert about any conflict or situation of bullying anonymously.
The conference was attended by the doctor in psychology, mediator and teacher Mari Luz Sánchez García-Arista; the director of the IES Ramiro II and creator of mediacionescolar.org, Jorge de Prada; Trinidad Andrés, mediator at IES Pradolongo, in Madrid, one of the pioneering centers in implementing mediation for conflict resolution; José Antonio Corral, coordinator of the Tutoría Entre Iguales (TEI) program in the Valencian Community; Raúl Ortiz, director of Andrea and partner of Nectar; and Margarida Castellano, general director of Innovation and Planning of the Department of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana.
Andrea’s director, Raúl Ortíz, has highlighted the importance of an application like this in the post-Covid19 era: “Professionals have to offer tools that complement distance education and improve people’s lives”. And the thing is that one of the things that has most concerned the school community and mediation professionals in particular is the growth of cyberbullying as a consequence of greater use of technology.
“Nectar and Andrea App have organized an online conference on education, mediation and new technologies.”
In this sense, Jorge de Prada recognizes that the virtual world complicates the training and the work of mediators: “That there are applications like Andrea is fundamental because, if not, what can happen is that many centers that have mediation are overwhelmed by the conflicts”. Conflicts that increase in the virtual environment because, according to Trinidad Andrés, “the technological space still exerts more violence due to the non-presence of the other’s body. In a face-to-face situation, the body of the other is a visible border that is more difficult to cross. But this absence of the bodies makes the logic of violence extend much more and be more damaging and profound, also because there is a belief in impunity”.
During the day, the need to train all members of the school community (students, teachers and families) in the positive use of new technologies that have come to stay was highlighted. The psychologist Mari Luz Sánchez assures that one of the triggers that makes children and adolescents bully is boredom and, in that sense, training them for a positive, proactive and curious use of new technologies would mitigate that boredom.
The creator of mediacionescolar.org, Jorge de Prada, also pointed out the possibility that schools can have advice from professionals in the technology sector for the implementation and use of all these types of tools that, like Andrea, can have a very positive impact on conflict management in the school environment.
Raúl Ortiz, responsible for the application and partner of the Valencian design agency Nectar, pointed out some of the benefits of this application such as anonymity, instant communication with the team of mediators, psychologists and teachers who attend to queries and the possibility of early detection of harassment cases.