"Learning from a computer is not as efficient as when it’s done by a skillful teacher... social interaction with a 'More Knowledgable Other' is central to child advancement..."

Lev Vygotsky (Psychologist) Wikipedia

We do not trust the educational efficiency of the STEM Self-Service Apps (Students learn without the help of the teacher), we believe in the theory developed by Lev Vygotsky and that every valid and efficient educational process must go through a human being and not through a computer. We therefore believe that to teach programming skills to kids we first have to give the knowledge to their teachers.

At galactIQ we know that teaching the rudiments of programming or robotics engineering to primary school students does not require prior knowledge, it only requires a valid educational method and a person capable of transmitting what they have learned to their students. For this goal there are no more qualified candidates in the world than our primary school teachers… in them we trust.

galactIQ empowers teachers around the world. We believe the future of our planet gravitates around them, if we reach all schools, we reach all the children of the world ... If we reach all the boys and girls of the world, the next generations will correctly understand what technology is capable of and will make our planet a fairer and safer place.

galactIQ is committed to ensuring that the basic technological knowledge remains in schools, that it is the teachers who learn first and teach later, that all this knowledge shall not be lost on a web server or a mobile application, we want the power to education remain in the hands of our teachers.

Why Tech Education?

Our children must go from being simple consumers of technology to understand it from within or even to become technological creators. Our obligation is to prepare them from now on, because at an early age in life it is much easier to become familiar with programming languages and computational thinking, understand the software or hardware from the inside, or intuit how their technological environment works. Now is the time to start this educational journey and to acquire a sense of technological morality or to be respectful in the digital environment… it is now.

Learning robotics engineering and programming is a fun way to effortlessly dive into the digitization around us. Learning to program today is not as complicated as a few years ago, there are many platforms and tools that facilitate the initiation and enhance the effort, understanding and creativity of our girls and boys. Our coding tool for primary schools explains to teachers and students the fundamentals of programming and robotics and how to use all of these technology development platforms.

In addition, our educational model uses programming and robotics to ensure that many of the concepts taught in classical subjects (mathematics, language, history, etc.) are assimilated by students forever.

It is vital to introduce these concepts from a very young age. The galactIQ team is compromised with making this happen without differences, in all primary schools in the world without leaving anyone behind. To achieve this we are reaching agreements with organizations that help primary schools in less developed countries, so that we could include our steam-based method in their programs at no cost for those schools.

Educating our new generations means improving the world.

2017

In 2017, John Ordovas (Schools Trust) and Nicolás Domínguez (The Very Little Agency) co-founded ICANCODE SCHOOL (www.icancodeschool.com) with the mission of educating girls and boys between the ages of 5 and 13 to understand the technology that surrounds them through the learning of programming fundamentals and robotic engineering.

The vision of Nicolás Domínguez (CEO) was to create an ongoing-education school (weekly hour of class) with the highest educational standards. The project should always have a creative and experimental approach.

In the first year of the project's life, Igor Dekkers, a young technology enthusiast, joins the team to contribute with valuable ideas both at the curricular level and at the integration of educational technology.

During its first year ICANCODE SCHOOL investigates, designs and tests its educational model with several groups of students and only when the team was sure of having a solid educational product, they opened the school doors. This was December 2017.

2018

This year was key to the project, the number of students increased rapidly and the school began to hire new teachers. It was back then that the small ICANCODE team began to design a rapid training process for teachers in the subjects of programming and robotics. At the end of 2018 ICANCODE had the fundamental pieces for what today is the base of galactIQ: A_an educational model for students and B_ an educational model for teachers.

2019

During 2019 ICANCODE consolidated its know-how, integrated new technology into its curriculum and methodology, trained twelve new teachers and began teaching Coding and Robotics at schools and other educational centres in Maastricht (Netherlands) as well as organizing competitions and technology campuses. 

The educational product achieved in these three years was almost perfect, students at ICANCODE SCHOOL learned quickly and the more than 10 teachers who had been trained thanks to the ICANCODE method showed impressive teaching skills in our classrooms. 

The development of our curriculum and educational method was expensive to maintain and this was reflected in the price that parents paid monthly (€ 99 / month). This turned ICANCODE SCHOOL into a very exclusive service. Many families wanted to enroll their children in our school but only some could afford it. It is at this point when Nicolás Domínguez thought about opening his educational method to everyone and finds a way to do it by building an educational platform (SaaS) that any school in the world could use at a very low cost... and this is how at the end of 2019 galactIQ was born.

2020

At the beginning of this year Nicolás Domínguezstarts up the new project and design its master lines, he presented the idea to John Ordovas (Co-founder of ICANCODE SCHOOL) and he accepted the challenge and injected the necessary funds for the creation of an 'alpha version' of the new platform.

In February of this year, Saulius Skruibis (Lead Web Developer at The Very Little Agency) and Lina Ribokaite (Front-end developer at The Very Little Agency) joined the project and the ICANCODE SCHOOL development team began to develop the first version of the tool. The whole team (Igor Dekkers, Saulius Skruibis, Lina Ribokante and Nicolás Domínguez) works really hard and contributes strongly to develop all the cool features you see today in galactic.app.

Tests began In May of this year at 4 different schools around the world: Maastricht (Netherlands), Lisbon (Portugal), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) plus at ICANCODE SCHOOL. The results of these tests were very positive and the team began to work on version 2.0 that gets released in November 2020.  The tests of this new version took place at a greater number of classrooms with a broader age range (we incorporated groups of kids between 5 and 6 years old).

2021

Juan Domínguez (Brother of Nicolás, President of Adglow.com and weekendstudios.com) joins the team and both, Nicolás and he began a first investment round, pitching galactIQ to various VC funds both in Spain and the Netherlands. This initial round ends successfully with the agreement of € 1M (Expected to finalise it in the second quarter 2021) with a Dutch investment fund. This capital will allow the galactIQ team to develop version 3 and 4 of galactIQ (web and App), the development of a stronger and more scientific educational methodology and curriculum and the integration of many new technological educational advances.

You are going to change the world.
 

HOW DOES galactIQ WORK?

SIGNING IN

As a teacher, you can log in to your personal galactIQ account on the website: galactiq.app.

THE EPISODES

Once you are logged in as a teacher you will see an overview of the different episodes.

YOUR STUDENTS

In addition, there is a "students" tab that provides an overview of all students in the group. Here you can see which students are logged into galactIQ and it provides the option to change the passwords of students.

PREPARING THE LESSON

Clicking on "intro" will provide a comprehensive overview of the episode's content. This gives the teacher the opportunity to prepare the episode. 

STARTING A LESSON!

Once the lesson is prepared by the teacher and all students are logged in, it is time to start the lesson. Press the "bell" button and the lesson will automatically start in the right place for both the teacher and the students.

AN INTUITIVE STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

Now that the episode has started, you as the teacher have the ability to set the pace of the lesson. Click "next" once the information has been conveyed or feel free to step back. Each slide provides enough information at the right time. 

galactIQ TO THE RESCUE!

Should problems arise or do students have difficult questions, you can always click "help", where you will find a collection of information relevant to the slide in question.

AND ABOUT YOUR STUDENTS?

As a student, you log into the galactIQ.app website just like the teacher. 

GO TO CLASS!

Once the teacher has started the lesson by pressing the "bell" icon, the student also gets the opportunity to press the "bell" icon.  

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Within the student's galactIQ environment is the ability to read information, watch videos and play quizzes. 

Still not convinced? Or do you have any questions about galactIQ? If so, feel free to contact us via info@galactiq.app. Our team is ready to answer questions, or schedule a demo so we can walk through the use of galactIQ together through teams or zoom.

ACCESSIBLE FOR EVERYONE

We work hard to make galactIQ inclusive for everyone. Thanks to DyslexieFont.com all of our episodes are written in a special typeface that makes our educational content easier to read for all children, but especially those suffering from dyslexia. We want to thank this Dutch company for donating its resources to galactIQ, we use their typography with great pride. 

MULTILINGUAL

Another great quality of galactIQ is its multilingual translation. The galactIQ team strives to bring our curriculum and educational method closer to children in many countries. We want millions of students to finish their elementary cycle with a great knowledge of the technology that surrounds them and be prepared to master a very technological and changing future.