The Verizon Foundation Names 5G EdTech Challenge Winners And Awards a Total of $1M to Bring Classroom Solutions to Life

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Feb. 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, the Verizon Foundation, in partnership with NYC Media Lab, announced the ten winners of the Verizon 5G EdTech Challenge. From AR and VR experiences, to machine learning, AI and mixed reality, projects were chosen for their ability to solve for student engagement, teacher preparedness and special needs support. The ten winning organizations will receive a total of $1 million and the winning teams will get access to Verizon’s 5G Labs and support from Verizon engineers and mentors to enhance their solutions. The Verizon Foundation plans to bring select projects to life in schools in the fall of 2019. In addition, the Verizon Foundation announced its commitment to be first to bring 5G connectivity and curriculum to up to ten Verizon Innovative Learning Schools across the country at the start of the next school year.

"5G technology will provide extraordinary opportunities in education," said Rose Kirk, Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer, Verizon. "The students and teachers in our Verizon Innovative Learning Schools will be at the forefront of this innovation and among the first to explore these transformative 5G learning solutions.”

The Verizon Foundation’s 5G EdTech Challenge called on innovators, academics and non-profit business leaders nationwide to submit ideas for powerful, transformative education solutions. An overview of the winning projects can be found below:   

• 5G COVET (5G COSMOS Verizon Education Toolkit), New York University – A set of virtual educational labs, each forming a virtual room that students will visit – moving from room to room – similar to the popular “escape rooms” experience.
  
  
• 5G K-12 Robotics Classroom, Tufts University – A set of AR and VR tools for robotics in K-12 classroom that gives students clear understanding of the complex workflows of a robot.
   
• Geolocation AR Monuments, Movers and Shakers NYC – An interactive and animated AR experience featuring a series of new urban monuments of women and people of color. The content brings stories to life, enabling students to learn history in an immersive way.
   
• Lumovia, Georgia Institute of Technology – An interactive, mobile, augmented reality application that prompts students to complete real-world STEM learning "quests" in their everyday environments.
   
• Making Projects with Purpose in Immersive Media, The New School – Middle school students and the Parsons School of Design harness the power of Verizon 5G to co-create projects to strengthen social and educational engagement by using various immersive AR and VR technologies including Doghead Simulation’s rumii, a social-virtual reality space that enable students to collaborate and communicate in one room from anywhere in the world.
  
  
• Mapper’s Delight, Rap Research Lab – A multi-person mixed reality environment that allows students, through Hip Hop, to conduct sophisticated analyses using data science and visualization.
  
  
• Mixed Reality to Improve Social Skills, Columbia University – A mixed reality game that helps students with autism improve their social skills.  Students will be able to read emotions and initiate conversations with multiple virtual characters in a room.
   
• Playgrounds Physics, New York Hall of Science – An app that makes physics fun and interactive, in the classroom and beyond. Students document their own bodies in motion, track the paths of their physical activities, and use onscreen data tools to analyze the variables of force, energy, and motion.
   
• The 5G Enabled Collaborative Mixed Reality Classroom, New York University – Students work together in teams to construct and manipulate virtual models, form hypotheses, and test those hypotheses in real time.
   
• Visceral Science: Grasping the Universe through Virtual Reality, Columbia University – An immersive VR experience exposing students to inaccessible realms such as atoms and particles, planets and stars, black holes and galaxies.

About Verizon Innovative Learning
Verizon Innovative Learning, the education initiative of the Verizon Foundation, is ensuring equitable access to education.  Its signature program, Verizon Innovative Learning, has given more than a million kids the tech education they deserve, and will help two million more by 2021. Verizon Innovative Learning provides free technology, free internet access, and hands-on learning experiences to help give under-resourced students the education they deserve. Powered by a next-gen, technology-infused curriculum that fundamentally changes the way teachers teach and students learn, Verizon Innovative Learning is giving kids the ability to do more.

For more information about Verizon’s philanthropic work, visit www.verizon.com/about/responsibility; or for regular updates, visit Facebook (www.facebook.com/verizon), Instagram (www.instagram.com/verizonnews) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/verizonnews).

About NYC Media Lab
NYC Media Lab connects media and technology companies with New York City’s universities to drive innovation, entrepreneurship and talent development. A public-private partnership launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, NYC Media Lab funds prototyping projects that foster collaboration across a range of disciplines core to the future of media. The Combine, an early stage accelerator for emerging media and technology startups, is currently in its fourth year. 
For more information about NYC Media Lab, visit www.nycmedialab.org

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Media contact:
Emily Vicker
Emily.Vicker@verizon.com
(646) 988-6530