Pupils switch to mobile apps
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STUDENTS at Wick High have become among the first in Scotland to take part in an initiative which challenges teenagers to come up with ideas for digital products that would prove a hit on the high street.
More than 50 pupils are taking part in Apps for Good, an award-winning course where young people learn to create imaginative mobile apps that change their world.
The charity initiative, which ran in England for three years, is being trialled north of the border where Wick High is one of just three Scottish schools taking part.
To help the kids find out how to make their mobile applications become a reality, the charity has enlisted the help of successful entrepreneurs, developers and corporate executives to offer expert advice.
Thomson Reuters global head of mobile technology, Bob Schukai, was in Caithness last week to talk to the students about the issues they wanted to deal with and how to solve them with mobile and web applications.
He said having the opportunity to discuss their ideas and discover their passion for technology was a pleasure for him.
“I let the students talk about their ideas, find out what they were thinking, sharing their ideas and giving them feedback,” he said. “To have 53 students showing an interest in this technology is a huge number, taking on real local issues that they see in the community to bigger things that would fit a global scale and everything in between.
“You see the passion the kids have for the products they have come up with and for the schools that I have been fortunate enough to visit. I am floored to find out how socially conscious they are as they really get the kind of problems they are trying to solve.”
Among the mobile app ideas students came up with were farm management tools, advice for pet owners who have overweight dogs, independent advice for people who are blind and local information for people who move to a new area.
Apps for Good chief operating officer Debbie Forster said the charity’s aim is to provide training and learning materials for schools to help students develop experience of business, marketing, programming and communication skills.
She said advice from experts such as Mr Schukai is a huge benefit for the students in helping them understand how to make their product viable.
“We are a charity that provides training and learning materials for schools and gives them access to our expert community, of which Bob is a member,” she said.
“We speak to students about a problem or an issue they care about and we take it all the way through to prototype.
“It is exciting that Wick High School has joined us – it is easy to run in London where you have lots of businesses and have people who are willing to meet face to face.
“But when you look at more remote schools, the opportunities for teachers and students to work with these experts becomes more difficult and it’s a feature of the project that schools find very exciting.”
She added: “Wick High School is an outward-looking school which has the expertise within its teaching that is clued up technically to use the tools to access people worldwide.
“It was encouraging to see how many girls were involved in the programme, as women constitute only 14 per cent of the total workforce in the mobile app industry.”
Head of computing science Chris Aitken, who organised the school’s involvement with the initiative, said it enables his students to learn a range of skills rather than sitting in front of a computer screen.
“The benefit for us is with the Curriculum for Excellence coming through, this course brings a remit of different skills such as marketing, business and group skills, rarely seen in computing science,” he said.
“People think that programming is all about sitting in front of a computer screen by themselves but the kids seem to work well in groups and I’m delighted with the response I’ve received from them about the project.”
