More than 80 students from schools across Arkansas will showcase mobile apps they created in their computer science classes at the Apps for Good Festival at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on April 28. Gov. Asa Hutchinson will address the group, and industry representatives will try out the student prototypes.
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.
This year’s festival will be held in the UALR College of Engineering and Information Technology Auditorium from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Students will give elevator pitches, hands-on demonstrations, presentations and will display posters and backboards for their projects.
The participants include students from Bryant High School, Cross County High School, Dardanelle High School, Greenwood High School, Lake Hamilton Junior High School, Pulaski County Special School District, Searcy High School, White County Central School, and the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts.
Instructors from most of these districts are working in tandem with Daniel Moix, ASMSA’s computer science education specialist, to offer the Essentials of Computer Programming Plus course on-site at their respective schools this year through the Coding Arkansas’ Future teacher mentoring program. In the future, those faculty members will teach the course on their own.
Next year, ASMSA has plans to partner with more than 30 districts to offer two new courses, Computer Science I and Computer Science II, using the same blended professional development approach. In addition, a pilot cohort will be testing out an Advanced Placement Computer Science A offering, giving students who want to continue their study of computer science a pathway forward.
“We want students to shift from being consumers of content and to become empowered as producers. 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.
This festival is an opportunity for each of the teams to celebrate their work. “By design, this is not a competition. It’s purely festive. We want them to be proud of their accomplishments for this year,” Moix said.
Representatives from local technology companies including Apptegy, First Orion/PrivacyStar, and Metova, Inc. also plan to attend. “The skills that these young people are developing and demonstrating are exactly those that are increasingly in demand,” said Allison Nicholas of First Orion.
Debbie Forster, Apps for Good Co CEO, will join the festival from London via Skype, as will Robert Schukai, head of applied innovation at Thomson Reuters.
“We’d like to offer our congratulations to all of the student teams taking part in the Apps for Good Festival in Arkansas,” Forster 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.”
This is the second year Apps for Good has been held in Arkansas as a pilot program for the United States. Moix worked with Forster to introduce the program to a group of Arkansas schools resulting in the first U.S.-based Apps for Good festival in Spring 2016. It was held at ASMSA.
“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 75,000 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.”
To learn more about Apps for Good, visit www.appsforgood.org.