Students from four Arkansas schools will have the opportunity to showcase their problem-solving apps at the state’s first Apps for Good Festival at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts on April 12.
Apps for Good is a United Kingdom-based education technology charity working to power a generation to change their world with technology. The organization works alongside educators to develop a free, flexible course framework that infuses digital learning with teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurship.
Students find a problem they want to solve and apply new skills to make a real-life app, exploring the full product development cycle from concept to coding to launch.
The four schools participating in the festival are Hot Springs High School, Dardanelle High School, Manila High School and Spring Hill High School. Each school is participating in the inaugural Essentials of Computer Programming Plus digital learning course at ASMSA.
Instructors from the four districts are working in tandem with Daniel Moix, ASMSA’s computer science education specialist, to offer the ECP Plus course on-site at their respective schools this school year. In the future, those faculty members will teach the course on their own.
The Essentials of Computer Programming Plus course is part of ASMSA’s Coding Arkansas’ Future initiative to provide computer science education opportunities for schools around the state. The initiative allows school districts to meet the state mandate that each district offer computer science courses for their students.
This year, ASMSA offered Essentials of Computer Programming and AP Computer Science Principles digital learning courses for students. Sixteen districts across the state signed up for the ECP Plus course, which included professional development for teachers. In addition to ECP Plus, ASMSA will offer AP Computer Science Principles Plus, a second course that includes faculty professional development, for the 2016-17 academic year.
Moix met Debbie Forster, co-CEO of Apps for Good, at a National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools conference in November 2015. She spoke about her organization, and Moix met privately with her, telling her “I want to put Arkansas on your map.”
The majority of schools that participate in Apps for Good are in the United Kingdom with very few in the United States. Forster agreed to a mini pilot program in Arkansas, wanting to start small so that the program could be more easily adapted for differences in the UK and United States’ educational systems.
Moix reached out to the 16 teachers participating in the ECP Plus course to see if any were interested in joining the pilot program. The four participating in Tuesday’s event responded quickly to volunteer, he said.
Each school developed two teams to participate in the program. The teams also had the opportunity to connect with professionals in the technology sector to receive advice on their apps.
The festival is an opportunity for each of the teams to celebrate their work. “We want to give them an opportunity to show it off. By design, it’s not a competition. It’s purely festive. We want them to be proud of their accomplishments for this year,” Moix said.
In the future as the festival grows, higher levels of recognition will be developed. In the United Kingdom, students compete for a chance to have their apps launched commercially. Moix would like the festival to reach those levels, but for now, he is happy if the students come away with the ability to be more than just a technology consumer.
“We want them to grow to become a producer of content from a consumer of content. We want to go from thinking about what can I buy in the app store to what can I put in the app store,” Moix said.
Forster will be at the festival and will speak briefly at the beginning. She said she is impressed with the students’ efforts thus far.
“We’d like to offer our congratulations to all of the student teams taking part in the Apps for Good Festival in Arkansas,” she said. “The students and their teachers have impressed us with their enthusiasm.
“At Apps for Good we want to change technology education forever — to turn young tech consumers into tech creators and prepare them to tackle the 21st century workplace. Our course teaches not only digital skills, but also arms students with essential real-world skills such as teamwork, problem solving, confidence and resilience. We’re excited to see what the students have come up with and can’t wait to see Apps for Good grow in the U.S. Arkansas has offered us a great start to our work here.”
Bob Schukai, head of applied innovation at Thomson Reuters, a technology company in the United Kingdom, will speak at the festival from Britain via a Google Hangout session. Schukai assisted some of the Arkansas student teams.
“Over the last five years, Apps for Good has grown in the U.K. from supporting a handful of schools and students to more than 1,100 educational institutions and more than 25,000 students in 2016,” Schukai said. “With this base firmly established, we are thrilled at Thomson Reuters to be partnering with Apps for Good as it starts to expand internationally.
“If the first sessions are any indication, the teachers and students are ready to rock the entrepreneurial world with some terrific ideas. These pilots are so important to understanding how best Apps for Good can be incorporated into the curriculum, and the Hot Springs pilot will give us some very good guidance as we take the program elsewhere across the America.”
The festival will be held in the ASMSA boardroom in the Administration Building from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Student presentations will be at 10:15 a.m. Each team will have about 7 minutes to present their app.
To learn more about Apps for Good, visit www.appsforgood.org.