Blog
Droidcon & Royal Society Study “Computing in Schools”
Posted by irislapinski on November 9th, 2010
The past few weeks have been really busy – you should have a look at the Apps for Good blog to see a summary of all the different ideas pitches and dragons’ den events.
Kevin from Novoda also invited the Apps for Good students to attend Droidcon and to speak about Apps for Good. You can find my presentation here below, and while the first few slides are pretty much a standard introduction to CDI, the final slides are not: we have been learning so much about specific problem solving and specific solution design that I don’t even know where to start.
We will be writing about this more, but basically if you cannot find 3-5 people with names, faces and real lives who have a specific shared problem, you have no market. We have been taking some inspiration from the guys at Strategyn and a lot of practical expertise from our experts, and will share more of that very soon.
xxx
Beyond Droidcon, Richard and I have been busy working on our first official policy position in response to the Royal Society’s Call for Evidence about Computing in Schools. Since Richard has had several years experience teaching ICT in schools and we are now running Apps for Good at Central Foundation Girls’ School, we thought we might add some unusual and radical thoughts to the debate. We would love the hear what you think about it! 
OpenTech 2010
Posted by irislapinski on September 12th, 2010
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting at Open Tech 2010 in London (Thanks, Sam!), where developers, policy analysts, opendata activists and everyone passionate about opening up government data to the public attended.
Jeff Gilfelt, developer mentor of the Stop&Search team at the first Apps for Good course, presented his ASBOrometer app as an example how data.gov.uk data can be used.
The MySociety community spoke about quite a few of their new projects including FixMyTransport; and then there were Emma & friends from RewiredState and Laura from FrontlineSMS. It was an inspiring day and interesting to see how many different people work in this field now or get excited by it.
Apps for Good has a broader remit than government data, but I’m sure that sooner or later students on the course will be passionate about ideas that require public data, so it was good for me to make more links and to meet some familiar faces.
My presentation focused on CDI and the key learnings from the first course. It became very clear to me during the day, that there is one thing everyone who is serious about solving civic problems needs to keep in mind: unless you are a genius like Steve Jobs, most disruptive innovations emerge when you ask the people most impacted. Stop & Search came about because Aaron, Sat and Gregory had real life experience of how it feels being stopped as a young man in difficult areas in South London – which often does not apply to white, middle-aged and middle-class developers [no offence!].
I think the strength going forward lies in combing diverse skills and life experiences on an equal and respectful footing. Then, true disruptive innovation can flourish… OK, enough preaching…
I have been told that there will be an audio recording. Once I get hold of it, I will update this post.
Apps for Girls – Opening of 2nd CDI Community
Posted by admin on September 6th, 2010
We are very pleased to announce our second CDI Community Partner:
Central Foundation Girls’ School (CFGS) in Tower Hamlets, East London
Central Foundation Girls’ School is a large, oversubscribed and inclusive inner-city girls’ school in Bow, London with 1,400 students age 11-18, 72% of which are Bangladeshi with 75% Muslim and 60% with a home language other than English. Already a Performing Arts Specialist School, it has now developed a second specialism called “Voice” which focuses on communication, empowerment and democracy through the subject areas of English and Citizenship. It aims to educate tomorrow’s women by promoting their development as leaders, champions of environmental sustainability and active citizens.
More than 40 girls applied for a place on the Apps for Good course, but only 20 of them will be able to attend the course, where some of the former Apps for Good students will now be working as educators.
The lessons will take place twice a week as part of the Central+ programme. Central+ is an activity project for after school hours developed by CFGS, which offers the girls the opportunity to follow different activities such as learning street dance, joining a cinema club or going horse riding, among others.
Ben Cole, Head of Community at CFGS told us: “All the girls who applied for the course want to achieve something and they see this programme as a real opportunity for them. They see themselves as privileged kids because they are getting an education and Apps for Good has given them the chance to put their passion for technologies to the service of the community in a practical way by developing apps that will solve specific problems around them.”
If you want to celebrate the launch of our second community with us you can register here: appsforgirls.eventbrite.com
TeachingLeaders – A call to action: educate critical minds!
Posted by irislapinski on August 29th, 2010
Last Friday I went up to Nottingham since Sharath Jeevan from TeachingLeaders had asked me to give the final address and call to action at their 2010 Cohort Residential at the National College for School Leadership.
Just in case you are unfamiliar with TeachingLeaders: Set-up in 2009, they train and develop outstanding school leaders (e.g. heads of department) in challenging inner-city schools, so as to directly raise pupil achievement and aspirations. They have got off to a rapid start with strong support from the government and the major political parties and are now in 87 schools across the South East of England. You can find out more about them on the TeachingLeaders website. Beyond the National College key partners are TeachFirst, ARK and FutureLeaders.
Initially I struggled to come up with a meaningful call to action, but then 2 weeks ago I stumbled across a short article in the Evening Standard mentioning that teachers were protesting very narrow exam frameworks, which did not really allow pupils to learn critical skills. With CDI’s educational inspiration Paulo Freire in the back of my mind I had my call for these 80 aspiring leaders in schools: to go beyond narrow learning targets and to enable young people to think critically and to set and achieve their own ambitions.
We will be launching in Central Foundation Girls’ School in 3 weeks time and I’m very excited to see if CDI Europe and Apps for Good can help to make this call a reality … more about this in our next blog post. (You can already register online via our Eventbrite page)
The full presentation can be viewed here: