Tech For Good: Education

Last night, Wednesday 28th June (to be precise), some of the Wool Digital team headed off to the latest Tech For Good event, hosted at Hyper Island Manchester.

As usual, the event had a plethora of pizza and beer to get the night going and there were three great presentations from Zoe Ross (Mind Moose), Petros Diveris (Jisc, Digital Futures) and Rosalind Bell (The University of Manchester).

Kicking off the evening, Rosalind Bell, @Ros_Bell, from the University of Manchester’s DigiLab, explored everything they have to offer, ranging from tech events to workshops. A key driver of the Lab centres around improving the tech literacy of students, staff and anyone with an interest in the industry. Within many of the events, students in the STEM disciplines demo work along with offering insight and input to companies and hackers work which has been produced — an invaluable bit of (free) feedback and perspective on new ideas.

Importantly, the lab is filled with items which people wouldn’t be able to use otherwise such as VR set ups and the HoloLens.

Ros also explored the setup of a new code club which is aimed at teaching 18+ students to code to really help propel them in the workforce and later life.

The DigiLab is a library initiative geared at helping people to access information and knowledge.

One of the questions posed to Ros centred around academic buy in and the means of achieving this, her answer? Being specific really helps. Another means of getting them onboard simply surrounded speaking to a wide range of academics and in turn spiking their interests.

Ros also explored how, at an event, an application called Play Field was presented (where teams work together on field trips) and presenting this to a wide group of people helped to develop the idea into a more broad solution.

Similarly, another question posed was how to get the younger audience of students to show up? Ros was honest and explored how it needs to be a constant barrage, but something which has really helped is working with student teams, and then this has organically grown the reach of the DigiLab over time.

Interestingly, it was also presented that those who are not students in STEM are highly interested in the DigiLab, thanks to the access to things which they wouldn’t normally be able to get their hands on.

Huge thanks to Ros for this great presentation, we will definitely be heading off to a DigiLab event next academic year!

Next up was Petros Diveris, @petrosdiveris, who is an innovation developer within the digital futures team at Jisc. The team are centred around looking at the future and creating prototypes which will target the oncoming trends and needs within the digital landscape in education.

Petros presented the idea that machine learning is a hot topic as well as a trend to look at the metrics and performance of everything, especially in education. However, it is reminded that metrics aren’t always the best way to gauge success or positive results.

Petros also explored how big data is the new XML and is extremely fashionable right now — which can be seen with ideas such as dashboards for absolutely everything.

Using a combination of student records and VLE stats, Jisc have created two pilots, the Student Goal app and the Data Explorer for institutions and tutors. The entire goal of this project is to help people do better and to help students do well.

The student records used include information such as the student’s name and if their parents have been educated. The VLE then explores the student’s data for engagement and performance looking at things such as marks for exams and attendance at lectures and seminars. To create a robust solution, Jisc are geared at obtaining as much of the available data as possible currently with seven institutions over the past two years worth of data.

The Student Goal app is like a fitness app thanks to its dashboards and display; however, this focus’ on key student information such as class attendance and downloads of work. Interestingly, along with being an informative platform, it also allows students to send feedback on their education along with enabling classes to chat to each other and interact. The app also summarises what the students have been up to and this can be compared to their friends and classmates along with comparing the average year on year. Although this project is still a pilot, there are lots of metrics which might encourage people to work harder.

The Data Explorer allows institutions and lecturers to see the whole data set overview of all student activity along with risk indicators. Interestingly, not all institutions have a large focus on the set risk indicators and so it’s important to make sure the product works for everyone’s needs and requirements. When it comes to risk factors, you may be wondering what these entail, well they could be focused upon things such as attendance or social economic factors such as a student’s parent’s education.

Hearing about the different projects which Jisc are currently working on was a great way to learn more about the education sector and how it can work with tech!

The final talk of the evening came from Zoe Ross, @psychologyzoe/ @Mind_Moose, who explored her path to starting her own wellness programme for children.

Zoe was a teacher by profession, both a Head of Year and Head Of Computing which involved a pastoral aspect to the role — along with teaching other teachers about tech. Within the pastoral aspect of the role, Zoe saw a few recurring issues; low self esteem/ self worth and issues at home to name a few.

On top of this, a friend of Zoe’s died due to suicide which changed her mindset and approach, leading her to do a masters in psychology. Whilst studying for her masters, Zoe learnt two key things;

1. All about positive psychology and how we can thrive not survive
2. There are loads of things we can actually do to help mental wellbeing

Zoe also learnt that 50% of mental health issues arise before a person is 14 and so this, along with the rest of her background, encouraged her to looking into positive computing and how tech can improve well being, something which Australia have done a significant level of work in.

This is how Mind Moose, a platform aimed at primary school children, was created. Mind Moose teaches children about mental well being, and then through osmosis also teaches the parents. Mind Moose is self directed learning and works on the basis of tasks, when tasks have been undertaken, items are then placed in the child’s backpack promoting social emotional health which helps to create a promotion of when children need more help and support. The application helps to give support where there currently isnt.

Along with exploring her own application, Zoe also introduced the audience to a few other great platforms which help mental wellbeing in children.

• Easy Peasy — Looking at primary school level and why children don’t do well, especially within vulnerable families, helping schools and parents alike.
• Tootoot — An anti bullying app which enables a child to write a note and then this is picked up by a responsible adult, allowing and empowering children to speak up at any stage, hopefully catching the bullying sooner than later.
• Class Dojo — A behaviour system application which focus’ on positive reinforcement which has been found to be very popular in schools.
• Night Zookeeper — An application which encourages children’s’ writing skills, set at night in a zoo, you are able to explore everything that the Zookeeper gets up to and the adventures that they explore.

When opening the floor to questions, there were many about health and wellness and how these can be promoted.

Zoe presented Apps For Good, a programme for secondary schools which encourages development of skills in the real world and empowers young people to solve real world problems.

When asked about how mental health can be improved within the workplace, Zoe explored that there a variety of tools currently at the disposal of everyone from online courses and CBT to introducing positive psychology and creating a list of what you are grateful for. Zoe also introduced the audience to the Big White Wall a space where you can freely express yourself and gain peer support.

Thanks to Zoe, the Wool team have a better idea of the applications out there which can help with mental wellbeing both for children and in the workplace — huge thanks Zoe!

We had a wonderful evening at Tech For Good Live and would like to thank the team for hosting a great event, as per usual, and the amazing speakers. If you were at the tech for good event and would like to chat more about it, or just fancy a coffee, drop us a line at hello@wool.digital or call us on 0161 635 0045.