Inspiring future changemakers through Innovate for Climate Change

Bosworth Academy, part of the LiFE Multi-Academy Trust, is a co-educational comprehensive secondary school based in Leicestershire. The school first got involved with Apps for Good back in 2021/22 during the pilot for our Innovate for Climate Change course. Innovate for Climate Change is a 7-session course that supports students in creating a community focused, climate action app. The students work in pairs and teams to design and create an app prototype that supports climate action, focused on one or more of the five climate action goals. Innovate for Climate Change was introduced to the school by the Deputy Director of School Improvement at the LiFE Multi-Academy Trust, Steve Hall, who is now one of our Apps for Good Fellows and won our Educator of the Year award as part of our 2023 Showcase. Steve oversees the development and implementation of the Real LiFE Curriculum across the Trust.

LiFE Multi-Academy Trust’s unique Real LiFE Curriculum aims to give students the knowledge, skills and values they will need to thrive in a modern world. The curriculum makes “learning relevant and more engaging by bringing topics to life” and Apps for Good is able to help the MAT to achieve this. Steve has successfully embedded our Innovate for Climate Change course across three different schools in the LiFE Multi-Academy Trust, including Bosworth Academy. He’s hoping to apply the course across more schools in the Trust going forward.

Computer Science teacher, Omais Khalid, is currently teaching Innovate for Climate Change at Bosworth Academy, and feels there are advantages to the course for both students and teachers. For teachers, the ready-made resources and minimal planning time required is a real benefit. He said, “The resources and the things that we need are already done for us…that helps a teacher delivering a lesson and planning”. With regards to the students he said, “students love it because they create an idea and it actually works, and they get feedback, so that engages them really well”.

Mr Khalid appreciates that the course gives students a unique opportunity to collaborate and help each other, saying “it’s nice they can sit in a team and come up with an idea, and that you can see them using their strengths”. He also reflected on some ‘stand out students’ who really benefited from the course, reflecting that students with more challenging behaviours tend to enjoy the immediate gratification and the easy usability of the programming software, App Lab.

We spoke to a group of year 7 students from Bosworth Academy about their experience of the Apps for Good course. They said “coding is a lot of fun” and that they enjoyed seeing their apps brought to life with working buttons and functionality. They also felt they had developed their coding skills and enhanced their team working skills through the course.

All students get the opportunity to take part in Industry Engagement sessions as part of our technology courses. The students at Bosworth Academy were joined by one of our Industry Volunteers who offered feedback on their app ideas through a video call. One student said, “They gave us some suggestions, and when we went back we added those in and I think it made our app a lot better”. Mr Khalid agreed saying, “The feedback from the expert I saw was really good. A lot of the (student app) ideas were too generic…so the expert got them to narrow down their idea for their app…”

The students had previously learnt about climate change in primary school, and felt the course had added to their knowledge of issues by introducing topics such as fast fashion. While the students have a few years before they decide on their GCSE subject choices they already felt positively about Computer Science saying, “I think it’s really good…Computer Science is definitely the best lesson”.

They agreed that getting to design a prototype app made the lessons fun. One student said, “You don’t actually have to like Computer Science to enjoy what we did (Innovate for Climate Change), everyone likes to sit and create and code apps.” When asked what they’d say to other students about the course, they agreed they would recommend it with one student saying, “I’d recommend it because it helps you to change the world for the better”.

If you'd like to find out more about Innovate for Climate Change or any of our other courses, get in touch with us or book a 1:1 session with our Education Community Manager, Kathy, by emailing kathy.sheppard-barnes@appsforgood.org.