Check out our pre-season checklist for a detailed list of things to do and helpful documents to get ready for a successful season.

• Complete your mentor profile
• Review the resources on this page, along with the mentor frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Understand the program and timeline
• Find a team: Once you have completed your mentor onboarding on the platform, you’ll be able to connect with a team. Your mentor training includes details on how to find a team.
• Once you find a team, email the team members, and have them complete the communications consent form.
• Connect with other mentors - join our Volunteer Slack workspace (details in the mentor training) and use our Slack Guide to learn more
• Review the student and mentor curriculum, to start preparing for your first team meeting

Time commitment

Our four month program recommends 40+ hours to complete. We recommend working with a co-Mentor for more support during the season. You can recruit a colleague, or reach out to other Mentors in our Slack workspace to find a co-Mentor.

It is up to you to determine how much time you can commit to while supporting students through the curriculum and building their projects.. Simply make sure to set this expectation with your team from the beginning.

More getting started resources: 

Mentor Curriculum - Each week of the student curriculum has a companion guide for mentors to help you feel more confident and prepared to support your team.

Submission Guidelines - Review these guidelines with your team at the beginning, middle, and end of your project to make sure you are on track and ready to submit everything in April.

Key Dates - Use these dates to help you create a schedule with the team from the start of the season to submission time!

Mentor Flyer - Share this with colleagues or friends who would make great Mentors or co-Mentors for your team!

Advice for Mentors - First-time mentor? Read our blog on how to be a better mentor for girls in tech!

Safety

Keep student safety top-of-mind:

• Mentors should never be alone with only one student nor message a student privately via social media or texting.
• A teacher or guardian must accompany the team on field trips or workshops along with the Mentor.

Please review the following items to ensure the safety of yourself and students. 

• Safety Training - Please review our internet safety resources and communications policies
• Volunteer Code of Conduct - All volunteers are expected to adhere to our code of conduct

FAQ

• Please explore our FAQ for all participants before reaching out with questions

When deciding how you want to structure your meetings, you can use our pre-built meeting agendas, or you can plan your own with the tips below.

Pre-Built Meeting Agendas: 

Junior Division

Senior Division

Recommendations for planning your own meetings:

Start with an icebreaker! 

This is a great way to get your team comfortable and in the mindset to work on their project.

Set a schedule

• Review the suggested timeline with the team so they stay on target.
• Agree upon a weekly day/time to meet and stick to it.
• Set clear expectations with your team. Be conscious and honest about your work and personal life balance.

Team Agreement - check out the video walkthrough here. The team agreement will help you and your team openly talk about:

• expected behaviors of each other and their mentor(s)
• Schedule for team meetings
• time commitment to working on the program
• communication consent form

Use this Mentor/Coach copy that includes some guiding questions to make the process of filling this out more straight-forward

The Team Agreement does not have to be submitted to Technovation, rather, it is a tool for your team to create together and reference if you encounter any challenges throughout the season.

Mentoring Virtually

Sometimes, Mentors and teams decide to meet virtually. Below are resources to help you have productive and engaging virtual meetings:

Being a virtual mentor

• Resource document
• Being an Awesome Virtual Mentor

Learn more about team building and motivation on a virtual team with this presentation.

Tips on leading virtual learning - Student Ambassador and Technovation Girls 2019 student winner, Dea, in Albania shares how to lead virtual sessions for students learning to code and build innovative projects.

Conflict Management

As a mentor, you want to help maintain productive and positive team dynamics by setting expectations and mediating disagreements that may arise among team members. This includes:

• Completing a team agreement with your team to set recurring meeting times and expectations (of each other and you as their mentor) for the program
  • The team agreement is a great conflict management tool. When the team runs into disagreements, you have the team agreement to refer the team back to. Use it to work them back to their ideal team environment.
• Acting as a neutral party in team disputes and differences of opinion to help team members understand what the disagreement is about and make a collective, informed decision
• Bringing in appropriate support for conflict resolution (such as Chapter or Club Ambassadors and/or parents/guardians)

Encourage your team to pick a problem to solve:

• Identifying problems in week 1 of the student curriculum is a great starting point!
• Get your team to look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG). This is a great starting point since it gives them 17 categories to explore. Have them pick 2-3 that they may be interested in exploring.
• Share the Technovation App Gallery with them to get ideas from previous seasons.
• Encourage them to think about and talk to different people in their communities to figure out what challenges people are facing that they may be able to create a solution for.

Free website suggestions to track team's brainstorming/mind mapping

• Miro
• MindMeister
• Padlet
  • tip: there is a maximum 3 padlets on the free version. When you need a 4th, pick of the existing padlets that does not need to be edited anymore and export it as an image or PDF. Now you can delete it and create a new one!

Moving your team from ideation to coding (video)

• The Technovation team shares some advice on getting your team to wrap up their ideation successfully and being coding their project!

If you have other websites to suggest, share them with the Technovation Team

For the 2024-2025 Season:

There is no longer an AI Project track. All teams will submit a project that must be an app —either a mobile app or a web app. Teams may of course still incorporate AI in their apps.

• Beginner teams may submit a Scratch project, a mobile app, or web app.

Moving your team from ideation to coding (video)

• The Technovation team shares some advice on getting your team to wrap up their ideation successfully and being coding their project!

Here is a searchable collection of our recommended resources.

Debugging (video)

• The Technovation shares some best practices to help you support your team address errors in their code.

Technovation has Youtube playlists full of video tutorials for Technovation Girls:

• AI Tutorials for Technovation Girls
• Technovation Beginners AI Concepts
• Coding Tutorials for Technovation Girls

Below are some recommended tutorials from each playlist to get you started on your coding journey.

Thunkable:

• Code Your First App
• Code an App in Thunkable
• Code a Social App
• Builiding a Motivation App

MIT App Inventor: 

• Getting Started with MIT App Inventor
• Make a Simple App with App Inventor
• Make a Motivational App
• Build a Translation App

AI:

• Using number data to make an AI model
  • Finding a public dataset
  • Using a public dataset to train an AI model
  • Using the trained model in a Scratch project
• Using image data to make an AI model
  • Training the AI model
  • Adding the model to App Inventor
  • Coding the app using the model
• Machine Learning 4 Kids (ML4K) 
  • Setting up a ML4K Account

Increasingly, global strife is affecting students everywhere— and students are aware of the difficulties befalling them and their peers. Many of us may not feel prepared to start or facilitate difficult conversations surrounding current events. We hope these resources can be a starting point.

We have found these resources helpful when preparing to talk to students — and our own children. If there are other resources you have found useful (generally, or for a specific situation in your region) please share them on our slack channel and be sure to tag us so we can review and add to this list over time.

General Resources

• “How to talk to kids when scary things are happening in our everyday lives?” (NPR, audio)
• "Helping Kids Navigate Scary News Stories" (PBS Kids)
• Guidelines for discussing difficult or high-stakes topics (University of Michigan)

Looking for additional reading you can share with your students? Check out these books. 

Antiracist children book list (Rise Up Against Racism)

The Technovation team sends out newsletters via email to keep Mentors informed about updates or upcoming program milestones. We know sometimes emails get tricky to find in your inbox, so here's an easy to access archive for when the search function just isn't getting you there.

Mentor Newsletters 2024/2025 Season 

Welcome to the 2025 Season of Technovation Girls! 

Did you miss the announcement?

Wrapping Up 2024: Essential Updates for Mentors 

It's your month! Special Edition

You're Invited: Mentor Webinar on Ideation Strategies

Need Coding Support? Book a Coach! 

Meet 1:1 with Our Volunteer Team

Important Update Regarding the 2025 Technovation World Summit

Coaches can feel free to browse the other resources on this page as well.

Session Notes Template

Coaches can use these templates to prepare their notes and ideas for meeting with teams. Coaches should share this document with the team at the beginning of the session so they can make notes throughout the session. 

*using the templates is optional, it’s just another tool available to you. All links will prompt you to make a copy for personal use.

General Session Notes Template

Ideation Session Notes Template

Coding Session Notes Template

Business Session Notes Template

Pitch Session Notes Template