,The DCU Academy was an a learning opportunity open to Transition year students through out Ireland. Students attended a three day course in The Helix to learn about business and enterprise. The were a total of 85 students who got the privilege to attend the academy. Five students from Cross and Passion College were offered places to partake in this academy.Jack Lee Parnell, Martin Allen, Saoirse Logan Mc Govern, Emma Keane and I were the five students lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to this academy.
On the first day of the camp we were all placed in groups with people from other schools that we had never met before. At the start I was nervous about this but after being in the group for the three days I realised that this made me and the people in my group try our best to represent our schools and show what we knew. We learned to to make and program a robot andsee who could build the biggest tower out of sticks of pasta and marshmallows. Although all these games were loads of fun, they were used to stimulate our brains and to get us into thinking of enterprise. After all this bonding with our new groups we were asked tom consider the problem of "making the transition from second level education to third level education". Over three days we had to come up with a solution to make this transition easier for the students, using the lean canvas. We were then shown how to make apps and websites. This was to make our ideas real and achievable. We heard many speakers about enterprise who helped us e develop our ideas. On the final day when all our ideas were ready we all had to create a Power Point presentation to showcase what solutions that we had come up with. Some groups had visuals of the websites and apps. Other groups came up with products such as care packages. We all presented to 'Dragons' Four groups were chosen from a total of eighteen. There was also one wild card to be picked. Four out five of the groups had students from Cross and Passion College were in the final. Saoirse's groups came first, winning mini Ipads. They have opportunity to make their app live. They will be going to DCU every Saturday now to work on the development of their app. My group came second. I also won a tablet for the best Snap Chats sent to the BOI team during the academy. It was the best experience that I have had in transition year so far, and it really interested me. It gave me and all the students that where in the academy the opportunity to see that even at fifteen and sixteen we can make a difference. By, Hannah Talt Comments are closed.
|
|