Since the start of this school year, I have been wanting to start an iDigital Leaders group of students in our school. But as teachers know at the start of the school year with so many new initiatives I was not able to get it up and running. In January I had the opportunity to meet my fellow ADE’s at the BETT and also at the Apple regional meet. Speaking to them about it, I was inspired with ideas and getting the project off the ground.
My main objective was to get some of the senior middle school students to lead the iDigital Leaders. I had a few grade 7 students who have helped me since grade 6 and I spoke to them about leading this project with the grade 6 students. They were excited and we agreed that we would have to have a formal application process if we wanted to make this a success.
I decided to create a timeline which consisted of:
- Creating a promotion video
- Creating an application form
- Informing parents about the new initiative
- Email informing successful applicants of interview times
- Creating interview questions
- Email successful applicants
- Email Parents about ongoing process
- Inform staff about students selected
One of the first things I did first was to create a promotion video and a slide show for Grade 6 students at assembly. I kept the application form open for a week and received an overwhelming response. I sent individual emails to all students about the date and time of their interview. Due to the sheer number of students I had to run the Interview process over two days. I also involved some of the Grade 7 students who were going to lead this initiative to take part in the interview process.
After the interviews we have selected 20 students whom we were quite impressed by their level of knowledge, the variety of skills and their willingness to work as part of a team. The groups will be lead by the grade 7 pupils (soon to be grade 8) and were divided into three groups based on their interests which were:
- Social Media and Training
- Researching and Creative
- Technical and Coding
As iDigital Leaders, my goal is for them to be ambassadors for ACS Egham and have an opportunity to advocate what’s possible when we bring technology into teaching and learning,
Plus, the chance to collaborate with students, teachers and parents and share their ideas through different mediums.
