AMIT’s Gogya teacher-training center, which opened nearly five years ago, has already brought innovative, forward-thinking changes to the way the students at our 110 schools learn. In 2018, it went a step further in its goal of preparing AMIT students for the 21st century by opening an on-site Academy of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
This initiative comprises two parts: an entrepreneurship incubator and a maker space. Students from five AMIT schools are coming to the newly opened innovation hub to learn the fundamentals of the Israeli high-tech and startup world. They get real-life, hands-on experience establishing a startup. That entails everything from learning about project management and programming to pitching their startup ideas to venture capital funds. The students in the maker space use 3D printers and all types of materials to turn their ideas into real prototypes.
The seed for the incubator was planted about five years ago, when high-tech veteran Galia Kedmi Fragman started volunteering as a computer science teacher at AMIT’s Kfar Batya campus in Ra’anana, where the Gogya center is located. Prompted by the question of how to instill the idea of personal entrepreneurship in AMIT students, she and the Gogya R&D staff began envisioning what such a project would look like.
Now that their idea has become a reality, students from five schools—AMIT Yud Ashdod, AMIT Renanim, Gwen Straus, and the Hevruta yeshiva in Ra’anana, and AMIT Shachar school for girls in Beit Shemesh—come to the innovation center to unleash their inner entrepreneurs.
