Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Dell Education Challenge Pushes College Students To Improve K-12

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 06/24/13

Dell is running its second Education Challenge, which will be awarding $30,000 in cash prizes as well as mentoring to university and college students who have workable ideas for improving the education experience for K-12 students. The announcement came during the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education, taking place this week in San Antonio, TX.

The competition, an outgrowth of the company's Social Innovation Challenge, will encourage young people to develop ideas that will specifically benefit elementary and secondary school students. Dell anticipates seeing a number of entries address personalization of learning.

Last year's Education Challenge generated 400 projects for consideration. The top winner, Forward Tutoring, came up with an idea for providing high school students free one-on-one online tutoring through the Web; students "pay forward" the value of their tutoring by doing volunteer work in their communities. The team of seven that developed Forward Tutoring came up with the idea during high school. The prize from Dell included $10,000 and access to a community of experts that could provide feedback and mentoring to turn the idea into a live site. The site now exists in beta form online.

Dell said 20 semi-finalists would be selected in October. Those teams will be able to further develop their ideas under the guidance of "certified mentors," people with entrepreneurial and business experience. In November three finalists will be chosen. A member from each of those three teams will attend an awards event in December for a final pitch.

The first deadline is Sept. 23, 2013 for entrants to register online and post project submissions. The competition is free to enter.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.

  • circuit patterns

    Anthropic Launches Lower-Cost Claude Sonnet 5

    Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 5, positioning the model as its most autonomous mid-tier offering to date and a lower-cost alternative to its flagship Opus 4.8 system. The company said the model can plan multi-step tasks, operate tools such as browsers and terminals, and complete agentic work at a level that previously required larger and more expensive models.

  • Human Hand Assembling Digital Data Blocks

    Report: AI Impact Starts with Strong Data Foundation

    High-impact AI implementations are more likely to treat data architecture, governance, and operationalization as strategic requirements, according to TDWI's 2026 Blueprint report.

  • Abstract background with digital shield made of data particles glowing blue blocking against cyber attacks

    Report: AI Attacks Push Organizations Toward Autonomous Cybersecurity Defense

    Artificial intelligence is raising the stakes of cyber conflict as attackers use the technology to accelerate reconnaissance, uncover vulnerabilities, and launch attacks faster than many security teams can respond.