This month, MK:Smart participated in the Brunel Urban Scholars programme – encouraging pupils to pitch a smart city app.
Open University Researcher, Annika Wolff who works on the Education element of MK:Smart, gave a talk to a group of scholars who participated on that day at Brunel University, Uxbridge. The topic was “Big Data: new technologies and implications for the future.” She focused on three topics of what is big data, how data is used to drive smart city technologies and how to be data aware and stay protected in an increasingly data-driven online world.
Following the talk, Annika ran two back to back app design sessions with smaller groups of 30 students each. Year 11 students were tasked to design and pitch a smart city app based on data of their choice. In addition, one scholar was chosen in each group to be the overall winner.
Annika Wolff was pleased with the outcomes of the day: “The students were amazingly creative and came up with some really nice ideas for city Apps. Well done to all the scholars!”
