On 9th February 2015, nearly 200 students, staff and mentors gathered in London for the GDST Digital Leaders Conference conference. Based around a ‘Dragon’s-Den’-style innovation challenge, the day focused on giving students from the 22 participating GDST schools an invaluable insight into what it takes to be a digital leader.
Girls were able to participate in fours Masterclasses run by industry figures: Aoife Considine, a mechanical engineer working for Transport for London delivered a Masterclass on User-centered design; Gemma Milne, Creative Lab Technologist for Ogilvy delivered a masterclass on Creative Technology; Chris Stone, Senior Direct of Video Feautres at The Telegraph higlighted how to Shoot great video and Lopa Patel MBE spoke on delivering the Perfect Elevator Pitch. Industry mentors from companies including Accenture, Atos, BT, Discovery Education and Morgan Stanley were on hand to share their experiences and mentor the girls throughout the day, with each team tasked with producing a webpage, a financial and marketing plan and delivering an elevator pitch to promote their idea.
Also speaking at the event was Ian Livingstone CBE, co-founder of Games Workshop and author of 15 books in the Fighting Fantasy series. As Executive Chairman of Eidos plc, he also launched several global video games franchises including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Speaking at the event, he said: “Teaching children to use software but not how to create it is like teaching them to read but not to write. Events like the Digital Leaders’ Conference encourage young people to take ownership of the technology around them, so they can become masters of their own creations.”
The overall winners of the conference were Sheffield High School for its Dream Pillow. In the words of the team, “Our idea was for a dream pillow to capture our dreams, allow us to watch them back, share with our friends through social media or even have analysed by psychologists!” The team won a two-day staff and student journalism workshop with Discovery Education in London.
Other awards given out on the day included:
The Peoples’ Choice Award which went to South Hampstead High School for its Safe Steps app, designed to help people navigate towns and cities safely.
Best App Award secured by Bromley School for its appropriately titled Appetiser app, which was conceived to offer recipe suggestions based on the contents of a fridge.
And an honourable mention went to Streatham and Clapham School for its Door of Doom game, a working demo of which was actually coded during the conference.
The conference also saw the launch of the GDST ‘App Design Challenge’, which will see students from across the GDST network compete to tackle a problem or issue they feel passionately about. Winners in three categories – social, gaming and lifestyle – will be announced later this year.
About GDST
The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) is the UK’s leading network of independent girls’ schools, with over 3600 staff, and nearly 20000 students between the ages of three and 18. For further details visit www.gdst.net