St Oliver’s Digital Champions
The School Digital Champion Programme was launched nationally during the 2016/2017 academic year and the innovative students of St. Oliver’s jumped at the opportunity to become involved. The team of four second year students guided by their computer teacher Susan Page include; Holly Kinsella, Samanta Jirgensone, Gordon Taaffe and Krists Kadaks. These students are called School Digital Champions and they have been engaging with technology to address real world challenges.
Over the course of the programme, teachers and students were provided with training which included workshops on video editing, web design, coding and App design, as well as on communications and presentation skills, marketing and research. This programme has proven a unique opportunity for students to become involved in an exciting and innovative project that has the potential to involve learning on many levels.
The St Oliver’s team decided to make a website to highlight the dangers of cyber bullying and offer ways to tackle this alarming issue. Their innovative website includes original animations, valuable information and advice aimed to combat the dangerous use of technology and come up with ways to encourage people to review their own digital footprint.
The pupils researched the term ‘digital footprint’, designed and created an avatar animation character who will offer a friendly face and guide fellow students around their website.
The team have said that they decided to go with this topic to show students how important their actions are online and to ‘open their eyes to the threats they might encounter.’
Site Visits
Students were given the opportunity to meet with leading technology companies through a series of site visits organised by the department. Project Showcase Students will have the opportunity to showcase all completed projects at an event in May 2018.
Promote hands-on learning The programme promotes project-based learning and knowledge creation, through the use of new technologies.
It is now more important than ever that learning becomes something that happens inside and outside of the school.