You can apply now to our second pilot Facebook course!

The course is all about creating Facebook Apps that solve problems you (the student) are passionate about solving. You’ll design the app, get expert advice and feedback on it, create/build the app, test it and even present it to experts in the tech field at the Facebook headquarters in London on the 18th of July.

The first pilot went really well, even better than we’d hoped.  We watched students who had never coded before walk away with not just the  confidence to code,  but the confidence to go out and work as developers!

We’ve learnt a few really interesting things during the first course, including what it takes to become a  good coder.  At the moment when people think of coding,  they feel that coders need to be good at Maths.  Now I’m not saying I completely disagree with that, but I have come to the realisation that it’s not the only thing you need, and just being good at Maths doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be good at learning how to code.

For those of you thinking of applying  for  the course, here are some tips on how to become a great coder, even if you’ve never done any before.

Here are a few things that can help in the process of learning to code…

1. Be Fearless! I’m not saying you have to venture into uncharted territory, fight Voldemort or hold a spider in your hand (I hate spiders). What I mean is that it’s important that you’re not afraid to  fiddle around with settings on a computer and just see what happens. If it breaks, it breaks! You can always use undo or a quick restart to solve your problems. A back-up of your work always helps too!

2. Be like Sherlock Holmes!  Learn martial arts and get a side-kick….no, actually, don’t. What you do need to be able to do is search for clues and use “elementary, my dear” logic to solve problems. Here’s an example:

            Found 3 different pieces of code that do exactly what you need? Then just piece them together like a puzzle, bit by bit and you’ll                    end up with what you want. Take out what you don’t want, keep what you need, etc.  Sounds easy, but some people just don’t do this!

3. Relax and be lazy, just take a breather and stay cool.  If things don’t work the first time (they never do!) just learn from it and try something else.  Yes, you read that right… be lazy, keep things simple, don’t try and reinvent the wheel.   If there’s code already available, just use it!(get permission first though!)

4. Admit you’re human. That’s right, you’re human, you are not a robot! You do not have to memorise every last bit of coding and every last syntax known to man. What you do need to be able to do is know how to use machines to you to do the jobs we humans are not the best at doing.

            Google is great at searching, so use it to find solutions to your problems instead to trying to find millions of solutions yourself!

5. Be persistent- that’s it, nothing more to say about this, no matter how many times you fail, just keep going!

Hopefully you can see it doesn’t take a super hero to become a coder.

Good luck and make sure you apply!
Sat

Number of students: 92 – Year 9 students

Location: Birmingham, UK

1) Why did you decide to do Apps for Good at your school?

In January 2011, I was lucky enough to see Iris Lapinski present about Apps for Good at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference and was not only struck by the clarity and purposefulness of the programme, but also the enthusiasm, confidence and authority which the students who had been through the programme presented with. I knew there and then that this had real potential and would fit perfectly in our academy as a real driver for both Design and ICT, but more importantly something that would absolutely catch the imagination of our students.

2) How have you implemented Apps for Good?

This year our Apps for Good Programme has been delivered in curriculum time to four discreet classes in Y9 totalling 92 students. Students have been put in groups of 4 or 5 and have had lessons delivered by qualified teachers and assessed under normal conditions. In addition the Academy has implemented a voluntary class after the Academy Day.

3) What have students gained from the course?

Students have gained an appreciation of the collegiate nature of project work and the need to reach consensus. They have benefited greatly from the ability to concentrate on a single project for a period of time and to iterate improvements. Students have gained skills in the areas of Business and Technology they would never had an opportunity to explore until Year 10.

4) What have teachers gained from the course?

Teachers have had the opportunity to work with students in a different way; focussed project work with a clear outcome has allowed development of leadership roles by students and new classroom management systems by teachers. In addition the project has allowed teachers the opportunity to teach soft skills to students such as resilience and problem-solving which have built upon the competency framework that we operate in Year 8.

5) Why would you recommend Apps for Good to other schools?

Apps for Good is fast becoming one of our key delivery mechanisms for Design and Technology and in light of recent emphases on ICT programming, this will link rather well with other elements of our curriculum delivery, enabling us to offer a contextualised programme which students enjoy while learning key skills.

Sir Mark Grundy, Executive Principal said:

‘When Kirsty returned from the Learning Without Frontiers conference in 2011, she persuaded me to watch the video of Iris Lapinski, saying that of all the people who had spoken, this lady had something special. Here was a special opportunity for our students, an opportunity that we could use to link a number of strands and an opportunity that could raise standards and levels of engagement. We talked at Senior Leadership Team about the “Apps for Good” opportunity and all could see the potential of this.’

Kirsty shared her experience of Apps for Good at Learning Without Frontiers in January in the Nominet Trust Digital Society Dome, please see her slides below:

If you are interested in your school becoming an Apps for Good Partner fill out the expression of interest form. Read more about Shirelands work on the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Blog.

The 8 AFGA categories are:

• Learning - Helping others learn
• The Power to do More - Getting the most from your time
• Community - Bring people together
• Travel - Helping people get from A to B
• Money - Making the most of your money
• Information - Using information for good
• Health - Encouraging healthy and more sustainable lifestyles
• Play and Creativity - Games and positive play for social good

Entries can be submitted from March until the 30th of April 2012.

We would like to thank all our sponsors and partners for bringing AFGA 2012 to life.

In the autumn of 2009, I was lucky enough to work with Rodrigo Baggio on a global education programme that I was developing. For those who aren’t familiar with him, Rodrigo is one of the world’s most respected social entrepreneurs with a passion for using technology as a tool for positive social change. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Digital Inclusion (CDI), the first non-profit organisation to tackle the digital divide in Latin America.

I remember the glint in Rodrigo’s eye when I asked him about his plans to bring CDI’s vision and ingenuity to Europe. ‘Just wait’, he said, ‘it’s going to be great.’ Shortly afterwards, he introduced me to Iris Lapinski and I knew that he was right: CDI Europe was going to be great.

There are three things that particularly strike you on meeting Iris. Firstly, she is a bold, imaginative and independent thinker. It would have been easy to import CDI’s approach to digital education but Iris knew instinctively that something different was needed for the European, and specifically British, context. Actually ‘instinctively’ isn’t quite right as in our first meeting, Iris shared with me her extensive research into the existing provision, the market needs and her gap analysis. This wasn’t someone who had a solution in search of a problem but a person committed to understanding how technology could address a specific social need.

The second thing that strikes you is Iris’ ability to keep her eyes on the horizon while her feet are firmly planted on the ground. When she showed me the outputs from the first Apps for Good workshop (www.appsforgood.org) , I went into overdrive. I wanted to get her in front of the Secretary of State, to find opportunities for her to present at head-teacher conferences across the country, to shout from the highest rooftop that here was a programme that could create huge opportunities for young people. Iris was adamant that Apps for Good needed to prove itself, to generate evidence that it made a positive difference. While innately confident in Apps for Good’s potential, Iris has a measured approach that underpins her commitment to achieving sustained and lasting positive change.

Thirdly, Iris exudes integrity and authenticity. I am lucky to have shared some of the Apps for Good journey and have seen times when there were opportunities to take a short-cut or to over-claim. There are huge pressures for social entrepreneurs to tell investors, promoters, prospective partners and clients what they want to hear. Iris recognised early on that Apps for Good would not succeed if it wasn’t rigorous; if it tried to underplay the commitment required by teachers, industry and young people; if it prioritised short-term gain over long-term impact.

Bold, imaginative, independent, measured and authentic are some of Iris’s many qualities. I nominated her as one of Britain’s New Radicals as it is exactly these attributes that we need in our society if we are to tackle some of the big social, economic and cultural challenges facing us today.

The full list of Britain’s New Radicals can be found here.

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.