Kids are smart even at 7…
“Mummy why have you made 3 packed lunches this morning?”….
“Because sweetie, Mummy is going to school today as well”
….And with that, I dutifully dropped mine at their school gates and set off to support the BIMA Digital Day 2017.
I met my colleague Tom at the gates and we headed across the playground to reception. The nostalgic sounds of the schoolyard quickly took me back to my school days and I began to feel excited about the day ahead. I loved school and getting the opportunity to give something back felt good. Tom, a seasoned pro at the BIMA initiative quickly gave me a rundown of the format, alleviating any concerns I had and assuring me that the students will astound me as they did him the year before.
We were paired with a group of Year 9 students individually selected for their interest in digital and considering their GCSE options. After a quick into from their tutor Kelly Griffiths, she handed over to Tom and I to introduce ourselves and Angry Creative. Having children myself we knew we had to keep them engaged, so opened the day with a couple of icebreakers.
Icebreaker 1: This is a DIGITAL day kids – get your phones out (instant cool creds!) We shared social handles and encouraged them to get involved across the day.
Icebreaker 2: We asked the children to draw pictures of themselves and the tasked them with guessing who was who. The kids loved it and it was great to see them pick out key facial characters to try and help their classmates. Although not a competition there was a front-runner when it came to likeness. Introducing Dave, by Dave.
During Icebreaker 2, Tom Chute broke the code of conduct by asking “who’s this girl Ruby?”. A boy, Rudy, responded with “Me.”
Wrapping up on the icebreakers we gave a quick overview of the day’s format and objectives and took a 15 minute coffee break.
The investment in the day was clear from the outset. The challenge sponsors that support BIMA (Liverpool Victoria and The Diana Award) really get behind the day with the content and structure extremely well defined. As soon we began to brief the students on the opportunity/challenge in hand, their eyes lit and you could hear their creative sparks starting to ignite.
Each of the sponsors presented a real-life problem/task and the students were asked to pitch a digital solution. Splitting into groups the teams had to choose a task to respond to and then work together to identify the team roles and together come up with a conceptual solution. They had approx 2.5 hours to discuss, research, plan and pitch their idea back to us (Dragon’s Den style).
The ideas and personalities truly blew us away, from politician inspired, lie detecting wearable tech (12 year olds actively calling out Donald Trump), to a pet health monitoring device and app – we were utterly mesmerised by their young brains.
The future of digital is in safe hands and brilliant minds.
A huge thank you to the students of Blatchington Mill, we very much hope to be back next year.
Tom Chute said: it was really interesting to see the groups provide well thought through constructive feedback during the presentations. This level of questioning and critical thinking was fantastic to see.
Mollie Pugh said – The kids were amazing, I saw moments of pure genius, some of them could give the PRAG team a real run for their money. Future employees, we hope.
