Research and Transfer
On the 10 th of February, the Innovation Price of Stadtwerke Wolfsburg was awarded at GoTec on the Goslar Energie-Campus. For the first time, innovative and creative digitisation ideas from students of the joint study programme of Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences Wolfenbüttel and Clausthal University of Technology DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES were awarded. The student team of the project "Bücherkoffer Programm" won the award with their digitalisation project. They support the Hamburg-based association coach@school in its project „Bücherkoffer" - a project for socio-economically disadvantaged families with the aim of increasing children's reading skills and promoting early childhood development - through a web and app solutions. The Innovation Award comes with prize money of 1,500 euros, which the students plan to donate.
The Innovation Price was brought to life in the winter semester of 2022/23 by the Stadtwerke Wolfsburg and DIGIT.
Photo: DIGIT
Wolfsburger Stadtwerke AG created the Innovation Award which is awarded in cooperation with the Center for Digital Technologies (DIGIT), a research centre of the TU Clausthal, and the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences. The intention is to recognise digitisation projects that stand out in terms of their level of innovation, practicality, economic viability and sustainability. The aim is to support young academics with a focus on digitalisation and to strengthen the connection to municipal services in the Wolfsburg region.
It was awarded at the final project presentation in the winter semester 2022/23 on 10 February 2023 in the GoTec. A total of five teams applied for the prize of 1,500 euros with their project ideas. The jury consisting of Dalibor Dreznjak (Stadtwerke Wolfsburg), Prof. Dr. Tamás Kurczveil (DIGIT/Ostfalia) and Steffen Küpper (DIGIT/TU Clausthal) reviewed all the applications and were delighted about all the innovative ideas that the students of the young computer science course implemented as part of the semester-long digitisation projects. "Our students of the Digital Technologies programme once again showed a lot of creativity and inventiveness this semester in their work on innovative and sustainable digital solutions," says Prof. Dr. Tamás Kurczveil.
The winner was the "Bücherkoffer Programm" team, which consists of the four Bachelor and Master students Christoph Greil, Hauke Hemmerling, Johannes Meyer and Saeed Rastegarrazaghi. Prof. Dr. Tamás Kurczveil explains the jury's decision: "The winners of the Innovation Award, sponsored by Stadtwerke Wolfsburg, have distinguished themselves through their social engagement. They make an important contribution to promoting early childhood development and show how important it is to involve young people and their ideas in shaping our future. We are proud of their achievement and congratulate the group on winning the Innovation Award. It is a demonstration to their purposeful commitment and ability to successfully implement visions."
"We would like to encourage the pre-existing innovative strength at universities in Lower Saxony with a focus on digitalisation with the award. Above all, practice-oriented research activities, such as the "Bücherkoffer Programme", are supposed to be integrated quicker into the economy. In addition, we would like to honour the commitment of the young students. We particularly liked the idea of developing a system to help increase educational opportunities for children in this submission." says Dalibor Dreznjak, Head of Corporate Development at Stadtwerke Wolfsburg.
The idea for the "Bücherkoffer" project came from the Hamburg-based association coach@school. The programme was developed there to facilitate access to children's books for parents from socio-economically disadvantaged families, to inspire them to read aloud, read together in families, and thus to increase children's reading skills. The “Bücherkoffer” programme is aimed at culturally mixed classes in the first two years of primary school, international preparatory and welcome classes at schools with a low social index, and kindergartens. For the duration of one school year, the suitcase can be borrowed by families for one week and thus travels from family to family. The suitcase (Bücherkoffer) contains children's books in up to 50 different languages that are suitable for reading aloud in the language of origin and/or in German. The suitcase also contains reading diaries, as well as multilingual reading instructions and tips for parents. Both parents and teachers are involved in the programme - the parents are supported with explanatory videos and reading aloud training in up to 19 languages, the teachers receive counselling offers to specifically support the pupils and kindergarten children in the promotion of reading and to integrate and value multilingualism in everyday life.
E-mails, messengers and websites are the digital information channels of today. While the “ Bücherkoffer” are in circulation, communication and the exchange of information between the user groups and the coach@school association has been difficult until now. In the summer semester of 2022, the four students of the DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES degree programme joined forces for the digitisation project "Bücherkoffer Programm" to develop digital solutions.
Via an online portal, association members and teachers can send information about the programme, read-aloud motivations as well as tips to parents, for example in the form of YouTube videos. In addition to the portal, the student team has developed an app that is available to parents as a free download. Here they can get in touch with the school classes, receive assistance and exchange information. The app also has a translation tool and can thus overcome parents' language barriers.
Sabrina Lampe from the Stadtwerken Wolfsburg (left) and the jury members Prof. Dr. Tamás Kurczveil (2nd from the right) und Steffen Küpper (right) and handing over the Innovation Price 2023 to the winner Team "Bücherkoffer Programm".
Photo: DIGIT
