This month BSB was proud to partner with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), inviting a group of young innovators in Year 6 to participate in the tech giant’s growing goIT programme. For two weeks, the students completed live virtual workshops in design thinking and app design led by TCS staff with one important mission in mind: to create an app that tackles a problem in their communities, based on one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The students collectively decided to address the issue of poverty and worked in three teams to storyboard their original app ideas. After 10 interactive sessions, they presented ‘Job’, ‘iDonate’, and ‘Save Your Health’, sharing their hopeful visions to improve employment, donation, and healthcare services.
goIT is one of TCS’s core community engagement programmes and aims to demystify computer science while promoting STEM education and technology careers. The initiative has seen global success since its launch in 2009, engaging over 10,000 primary and middle-schoolers in North America before expanding into more recent pilot programmes in Germany, Sweden and Belgium. The model is simple yet immersive – students learn IT basics in design thinking, programming and app development, and receive a lesson in the UN’s SDGs. Equal parts instruction and practice, goIT challenges the students to apply their new IT knowledge straight away as they work through each stage of the design process together, using empathy to identify a problem and generate possible solutions before creating prototypes to present to peers.
The workshops were expertly led by Dr. Enikő Fodor, HR Business Partner at TCS, and included sessions with the company’s IT specialists. Primary teacher and Curriculum Leader on Technology for Learning, Sébastien Delahaye Gamucci, worked with the Year 6 students on site:
“It was an amazing experience as our students were able to meet and work with real life computer engineers. They helped our students gain 21st century skills and confidence in Computer Science. Real-world connections like this one provide great opportunities to learn how our communities and society work.”
Indeed, goIT seemed to perfectly combine a number of major campus initiatives to enrich student learning. Career exploration, skill building and first-hand interaction with working professionals are hallmarks of our BSB Futures programme offering activities for both Primary and Secondary students throughout the year. STEM has also gotten a major boost on campus with the opening of our new Primary Technology Hub in October 2020; fully-equipped with gadgets and devices to inspire curious minds, the space was an ideal environment for TCS’s workshops. Furthermore, goIT’s application of STEM to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals supports ongoing efforts to further embed interdisciplinary connections within the curriculum.
Thank you to TCS for sharing such an engaging and creative STEM project with us!
“Thank you so so much for teaching us so many things. I had a lot of fun and I woke up every day excited for what we were going to do next” -Anoushka, Year 6
“Thank you so much for helping me understand how to create an app and to understand more about computing. This year has been crazy but you still managed to make these computing lessons great fun.” -Klemi, Year 6
“They showed amazing interest and willingness to learn and collaborate. All of them testified as well-educated, intelligent and open-minded young innovators of today and tomorrow.” -Dr. Enikő Fodor, TCS