Fundación Endesa presents the Retotech Awards to the most innovative schools of Madrid and Aragón

• The three RetoTech_Fundación_Endesa Festival Awards went to projects in robotics aimed at facilitating the lives of children with autism spectrum disorders, eliminating architectural barriers for students with reduced mobility and developing fire prevention systems.
• As a new feature this year, the project has also been extended to 15 centres in Aragón with the purpose of making this initiative reach more students.
• In this 4th Edition, the event was attended by the Vice Counsellor of Educational and Science Policy in the Community of Madrid, Cristina Álvarez Sánchez.

For the fourth consecutive year, Fundación Endesa has organised the RetoTech_Fundación_Endesa Festival at Endesa’s headquarters in Madrid. The project is related to technological training and contributes to the transformation and innovation of education at all levels, both for students and teachers. The project is carried out thanks to the collaboration with the Department of Education of the Community of Madrid and the Department of Education, Culture and Sports of the Government of Aragón, which joined this project for the first time this year.

Three awards were presented during the Festival: the Fundación Endesa Award, the Endesa Employee Award and the Networks Award, which on this occasion, went to projects in robotics intended to facilitate the lives of children with autism spectrum disorders, eliminating architectural barriers for students with reduced mobility and developing fire prevention systems.                                                            

The Fundación Endesa Award, chosen by a jury, was given to the project titled “Chaleco ANE (Ayuda, Necesidades y Emociones)” (“HNE Vest (Helps, Needs and Emotions)”, from the students from Colegio San Juan Bautista, of Arganda del Rey, Madrid. The winning project in this category was created with the objective of helping children from a centre for people with autism spectrum disorders. The vest has buttons, which when pressed, indicate through LEDs what the students are feeling at that time (nervousness, anger, fear or sadness) and what their basic needs are (to go to the bathroom, hunger or thirst). Moreover, it has a distance sensor that advises when someone is too close and a switch that the student can activate by themselves that turns on lights so that their peers know that they are making too much noise and being bothersome.

For its part, the Networks Award, which is given to the project most voted for on the RetoTech_Fundación_Endesa website, went to Colegio Cardenal Spínola, of Madrid, with over 1,700 votes, for its project “STEAMos para TODOS”, which consists in the creation of an educational centre without architectural barriers, so that any student with reduced mobility can develop themselves without limitations of mobility and accessibility. It is all developed with creativity, robotics, 3D printing and lots of teamwork.

And the Endesa Employee Award, which has been chosen by the company’s employees themselves during the Festival, went to the Instituto de Educación Secundaria José García Nieto, of Las Rozas, Madrid, with its project Prevención de Incendios (Fire Prevention), a temperature, humidity and wind speed measurement station that sends these values to a server that firefighters can access so that they are prepared and informed when in a certain place, the risk of fire is high.

The event brought together 825 students and 130 teachers from 75 primary and secondary schools from Madrid and 15 from Aragón, who participated for the first time this year. The Fundación Endesa challenged them to design their own apps integrated with robots that would provide a solution to a social problem and to improve the quality of life in society in some way. At 1:00 p.m., the students and teachers began to arrive at the Endesa Headquarters, which this Wednesday afternoon, became a meeting point where students had the opportunity to present the projects they worked on during the academic year.

The event was attended by the Vice Counsellor of Educational and Science Policies of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Álvarez Sánchez, and the General Director of the Fundación Endesa, Carlos Gómez-Múgica.

The RetoTech_Fundación_Endesa Festival is a meeting point between children with the same interests, which for everyone who participates, is a great experience and a very good opportunity to present their projects before the hundreds of guests present during the event. Its fourth edition was launched in September 2018, and as a new feature this school year, and with the objective of reaching as many beneficiaries as possible, it was extended to schools in Aragón. With the collaboration of BQ Educación, the Fundación Endesa provided all 90 centres selected with robotics and 3D printer kits with which they worked throughout the school year to create their projects.

This year, 183 schools registered to participate in RetoTech_Fundación_Endesa, of which 90 were selected. In this fourth edition, a total of 5,400 students and 360 teachers have benefited, thanks to this educational project. In addition, throughout the four editions, over 12,700 students and 872 teachers have participated in this great challenge of entrepreneurship and educational innovation in technology across 136 educational centres of the Community of Madrid and Aragón.

With this initiative, the Fundación Endesa expresses its support for technological innovation in the scope of education. Without a doubt, the project allows both students and teachers to explore their more scientific and technological side, and to detect the students’ most creative and ingenious skills, while they also learn to work in teams, lead projects, manage their time and to make decisions.

More information at: http://www.fundacionendesa.org/