In the 12 months since we experienced rapid growth as schools throughout the UK came forward to participate in the programme.

This year, Debbie Forster  presented a summary update at the LWF Conferene and explained why our programme is a new indicator for learning in the future.

Apps for Good also took part in workshops at the Nominet Trust Dome, as part of the Free Festival. During the workshop visitors found out more about the Apps for Good mobile course, where young people create apps to change their world. Teachers from two schools also showcased their schools work and talk about their learning experiences.

Last week Amarah took part in the UKTI European Press tour here is her interview:

Amarah had a message for the team about her work experience:

Well done  Amarah, you did very well at the CDI Europe office and you can pop back any time!

The Education team have been travelling up and down the nation, meeting students and talking through their ideas with them.  We are  so pleased that even in the face of technical challenges, students remain enthused with the energy and vibrancy that have come to characterize not only the idea generating processes at the heart of Apps for Good, but also the hard work of our educators across the Apps for Good network.

Along our travels we’ve heard dozens of pitches in the making, so in this post I thought it might be useful to cover my top 5 tips on coaching students from general, sometimes hazy ideals to specific solutions.

Many teams have gone through Problem Definition (Step 1) already, but I hope this post is useful in helping our educators coach the many teams who will either need to do further iterations of Step 1, or who want/need to ‘reboot’ the journey from problem through to solution, especially in cases where earlier attempts proved infeasible or teams have split up, etc.

The top 5 tips

1. Specific problems lead to specific solutions. Remember it’s difficult to create a compelling solution (within the scope of the course) without having a specific problem in view. It’s OK for the problem to change along the way, but first it needs to be clear. See my earlier post on this subject.

2. Make sure students have a mental model for how apps work. This is especially true where students don’t have their own mobile phones. It is well worth taking the time to let them see what the full breadth of functionality is, but also torule out any unrealistic behaviours or usage models

3. Reduce ambiguity at the problem stage, but delay, for as long as possible, “written-in-stone” solutions during Solution Design. Students typically want to get straight out of the blocks on the the ‘b’ of the bang and create solutions, but this can hold things back if it leads to either not defining the problem clearly, or rushing down the straightest line between apparent problem and quick fix. If the solution doesn’t change at least once during step 3 then you know something’s up!

4. Have fun! Outlaw the pursuit of ideas that don’t genuinely interest students. I am rarely persuaded by students who tell me that, above all else,they want to solve the problem of ‘forgetting things’. I’m not saying that this is not a viable space (though it is extremely competitive), only that it often comes from a place of ‘what problem should I solve?’, rather than ‘which problem do I care most about–which problem am I most interested in solving’.  This is the key to success and worth remembering.

5. Remember, problems can be cornered. Whilst they can’t always be solved, problems can be buffeted into one of 3 corners. Your questions can usually force even the most awkward problem to be defined until it moves in one of three directions.

A. Problem is intractable: Issue is infeasible for computational/technical reasons OR involves large and dramatic behavioural change on the part of the user to get them to even use the app

B. Problem is trivial: An issue easily remedied by a very small amount of self-discipline and personal attention, or a problem for which designing an app is akin to using a sledgehammer to kill an ant. Problems likely to continue with or without an app as an intervention should also move in this direction

C. Problem is clear, specific and compelling: a problem description that gets straight to the heart of the matter in no uncertain terms with appropriate scope to be solved by an app.

Over the summer Apps for Good students from Central Foundation Girls’ School had the chance to film with  BBC’s children’s TV programme Blue Peter. Yesterday afternoon Apps for Good students were hooked to their TVs watching BuzzerBuddies and 2-the-Res-Q compete to have their app developed.  You can watch episode on BBC iPlayer (HD) or below on YouTube.

The winning app CyberMentors by the 2-the-Res-Q team, is now live on the Android Market and can be do downloaded for free here . You can read more about how the app was brought to life this summer in a previous blog post.

Annika Small, Director of the Nominet Trust appeared as a judge on the show, she said:  “It’s exciting to see young people creating apps that address specific needs in their lives and communities. Nominet Trust is supporting an online platform that will soon make Apps for Good accessible to all. Imagine the creativity of young people across the UK and beyond unleashed in improving the world they live in.”

Well done to BuzzerBuddies, 2-the-Res-Q and all the students from the Apps for Good course at Central Foundation Girls’ School.

The course, which will be created and designed by Apps for Good, has been developed  with the assistance of Techlightenment, an Experian company that develops social media social technology. This latest course offers young people the chance to learn how to build Facebook applications which have a positive social impact on their life and others around them.

Over the coming months the details of the Facebook- Apps for Good course will be made available to developers and educators across the globe, via the Apps for Good online platform to enable the scheme to be replicated across the world.

Young people studying on the first course in will be advised by some of the UK’s leading technology names learning the basics of web development like HTML 5 as well as more advance coding such as PHP for more complex apps and SQL for databases. Participants will be taught how to design, create, test, release, evaluate and maintain their own Facebook application before presenting their social applications to industry experts during a graduation ceremony in November.

Richard Allan, Director of Policy of Facebook in Europe said: “Facebook is proud to work with Apps for Good to create a course which has the potential to help young people from all corners of the world improve their entrepreneurial skills, employability and technological understanding while building tools, apps and services that could transform the society we live in.’

Iris Lapinski, CEO of Apps for Good said: “We are very excited about the Apps for Good partnership with Facebook which goes right to the heart of how young people use technology today. The course will allow them to create Facebook applications that address social and community problems they are passionate about in a truly bottom-up way.”

Gi Fernando, CEO and co-founder of Techlightenment said: “The framework that Apps for Good creates will provide young people with the skills to build social media applications and develop their overall business acumen, giving them a head start in whatever their career aspirations may be.”

Facebook and Techlightenment will also join the Apps for Goods expert community along side a range of technology companies such as Dell and Thomson Reuters, helping young people on the Apps for Good courses across the UK with their mobile and Facebook app ideas.

Details on how to register for the Facebook Apps for Good course are available here . The course will run for  6 weeks from 31/10/11 .

Never work with Children or Animals… isn’t that what they say? Well, ‘they’ couldn’t be more wrong. At least for the former anyway…

In mid-July Fuerte were approached by Apps for Good to support a team of young individuals who would win a Dragon’s Den style competition. The winning team, aptly named 2-the-res-Q, were the victors with their anti-bullying app. The prize? To have their idea come to life. Our role, as an App design and build agency, has been to guide and support the 2-the-res-Q team through the whole process of creating an App.

For the last few weeks we’ve been working closely with the team of girls to flesh out the concept, produce wireframes and designs. We’re now at the very exciting stage of starting the build. The main aim has been to produce what they want; we’ve played a supporting role and given them access to our designers and developers. The girls have kindly given up one day a week from their Summer Holidays to work in our studio (no rest for the… app developer?). They produced the site-map and all of the wireframes for the app themselves. The next step was to put together mood boards and sketch deigns for every screen. Our designers, working closely with the girls, produced the final artwork. It’s been a very collaborative effort.

A key component for this App is the content, and the more important question to be answered; where are we going to get it? Apps for Good assisted the girls by connecting them to a partner, Cyber Mentors, who were willing to help with the content and allow access to their mentoring system.

In January I was delighted to hand Apps for Good a Learning Without frontiers Award for their innovative and positive impact in education. I always read up carefully about award candidates and the more I read about Apps for Good the more excited I felt about what they did.

My own light bulb moment came when I realised there might be a powerful opportunity to collaborate.  As founder of TeenTech , I’ve organised large scale events for teenagers for the past four years and I realised that a “Design an App” challenge would make a really stimulating workshop in our Innovation Zone . The only problem was we had to squeeze an experience Apps for Good run over 70 hours into a meaningful activity that that would run for just one hour and yet still give the teenagers a real taste of what app building was all about.

While I was considering how on earth to do this, Dave Addey  who heads up app company Agant made the fatal mistake of approaching me at a ebook conference. He was wonderfully generous and not only volunteered his time but that of Alyson Fielding from Pyuda who’d worked with him on the award winning Malcolm Tucker app.

Our focus at TeenTech is helping young teenagers meet and understand more about the real people who work in contemporary technology. It was important that the workshop showcased the great personal story Dave and Alyson had to tell about their work on apps like UK Trains, Arsenal and Malcolm Tucker but also delivered a clear and lively introduction to app design, incorporating the wealth of practical experience from Apps for Good.

 I mapped out a structure for the workshop and then Iris (Apps for Good CEO), Dave, Alyson and myself set up a conference call to talk through the detail, determined to get the most from such a challenging timeframe

The “challenging “ timeframe meant Alyson and Dave had just 13 minutes to explain apps, tell their story, detail the range of people working in their team and their different skills and then explain the capabilities of an app and how they exploit the functions of a smart phone.

Then we challenged the teenagers (300 over three sessions) to work in groups of ten to develop their own ideas for apps. You can see the winning ideas here. There were also tables of teachers competing for the chance to turn their app into reality.

The feedback was incredible. It wasn’t just the students who enjoyed the activity but the teachers. Some said they were going to tear up lesson plans as a result of what they saw.

Thanks to the generosity of Apps for Good, Dave and Alyson you’ll need to watch out for a raft of young app designers in Humberside. It was a very, very successful experiment and as a result we will be running the “Design an App” workshop at all our TeenTech events across the UK.  From both Apps for Good and TeenTech’s point of view there is serendipity in the timing as Apps for Good will make their detailed course plans available online for their partners, so students and teachers in the Apps for Good community will be able to follow up on everything they have learnt. A massive thank you to Iris and to Dave and Alyson who helped create such a powerful one hour session which will inspire thousands of young teenagers over the coming year.

]]> http://appsforgood.org/2011/08/04/teentech-students-put-together-their-app-ideas-in-hull/feed/ 0 http://appsforgood.org/2011/05/09/stop-search-app-the-story-so-far/ http://appsforgood.org/2011/05/09/stop-search-app-the-story-so-far/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 14:09:34 +0000 satwantkenth http://appsforgood.org/?p=2192 In June last year I graduated from the first ever Apps for Good course. My group made the Stop And Search app, an app that lets users know their rights when they are stopped and searched by police.

So what’s happened with our app since then, you ask?

Well, since its launch onto Android Market, we’ve so far had over 800 downloads with a 4and ½ rating with great comments from users.

At the end of last year we successfully applied for and received funding from Unltd, which is about to enter our account.

We’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes ground work over the last 6 months – meeting and talking with various organisations including the Community Monitoring Network, National Policing Improvement Agency, numerous Metropolitan Police services and the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Everyone has been encouraging and supportive of our work, and given us great tips and feedback on how to take things forward.

We are determined to make the Stop and Search app as successful as possible, to make as much of a positive impact as we can.  Which is why we’ve been talking to so many people…we are creating a new version!  It’s still in the making and we are hoping to get as much buzz when we release it on ALL platforms as we did when we released the first version on Android.  So of course we want to make sure we get things just right!  So for now keeping watching this space… a shiny, new and improved version of Stop and Search will be coming soon to an App store near you!

So please join us for a drink! …tell us what you’ve been up to, and network with our ever expanding AfG community of tech, design and education professionals.

Exciting things are happening for us – we are busy building an OpenSource platform and preparing to roll out Apps for Good in 20 – 30 UK secondary schools from September. Although we hope you can make it and chat, we will also be blogging our plans over the coming weeks!

OysterCheck is an app idea developed late 2010 at our High Trees centre, focusing around managing your Oyster Card more efficiently, and allowing topping up on the go.

The OysterCheck team present to a selection of TFL technical & business staff.

The team gained a broad understanding of how Oyster and ticketing in general works, and TfL’s future plans. Later on they got a more in-depth behind-the scenes experience of the work happening at Oyster, Future Ticketing and TfL’s Customer Contact Centre. They got to present their app to developers and business analysts, taking and answering questions.

Oyster runs several active scrum teams practicing agile development. The Scrum Master responsible for them gave a workshop covering the basics of Scrum, and internally proven techniques.

The team also got to meet the Director of Fares & Ticketing : – )

Darren from the OysterCheck team said:

…it was an experience to discover the process involved in developing & managing an enormous project such as Oyster. I’ve come to appreciate the principles of Agile testing through a practical demonstration we did which involved completing an assortment of small timed tasks. I also found the scrum & sprint meetings insightful as an alternative method of keeping key staff briefed on current problems & solving them.

TfL worked with us previously to consider how OysterCheck might be built. Unfortunately, this stalled due to an overhaul in the underlying technology needed. We’re very grateful to TfL for organising such a valuable and extensive visit for the team.