Katie Maunder, a year 8 student at Sevenoaks School, has received a Bronze-level Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA), a new scheme established by HRH The Duke of York. Katie, together with other students from across the country, collected the accolade at a ceremony hosted by HRH The Duke of York at St James’s Palace.
iDEA was established by HRH The Duke of York to support the development of entrepreneurial, digital and citizenship skills through a series of challenges (known as ‘badges’). The programme operates an innovative badge store concept where all the resources are completely free and accessible on all devices including mobiles and tablets. Director of Innovation at Sevenoaks School, Graeme Lawrie, worked with HRH The Duke of York and the iDEA team to develop the programme, which teaches skills such as video editing and creating a good digital profile.
Sevenoaks School is one of the world’s leading International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and seconded Graeme for a year to work as a special advisor at the Palace and to support the design of iDEA. The school is well known for its innovation in education and curriculum development and is supporting The Duke’s scheme in order to enable students to practise and hone skills that will be vital for forging successful careers.
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“We are always looking to best support the development of the next generation’s entrepreneurial and technological skillset and the iDEA project is a great tool to encourage this. I was really flattered to be invited to work so closely on the project and channel my own passion and understanding of technology to design a range of challenges to teach valuable skills that will supplement students’ academic education,” said Graeme. “The event at St James’s Palace brought together the first set of students to receive the Bronze Award and talk about their individual experiences and achievements. I’m also incredibly proud that one of Sevenoaks School’s students was among them.”
As students complete challenges in each of the four core categories: citizen, worker, maker and entrepreneur; they collect points and category badges. 250 points are needed to win a Bronze Award. Katie achieved 280 points completing challenges over the Christmas holidays and attended the awards ceremony with Graeme. As well as HRH The Duke of York, Katie also met and conversed with Ian Livingstone, prominent games maker and co-founder of Games Workshop, at the event.
After winning the award Katie said: “I think that the iDEA programme is absolutely amazing and have loved working through the challenges to learn about different aspects of technology. I particularly liked the more creative tasks, especially ‘How to make your own simple game’, and how you could personalise the game and it was fun to play once you had finished. I find it incredible how much you learn from completing one badge.”
It has had a huge impact on me and completely changed the way I see my future – Katie Maunder, year 8 student at Sevenoaks School
“Now that I’ve achieved the Bronze award, I plan to work towards the Silver and Gold awards, once they become available. iDEA is a great way to learn valuable skills and further understand technology. It has had a huge impact on me and completely changed the way I see my future; I have always wanted to be a vet but now I see that there is a huge opportunity to integrate technology to enhance this,” concluded Katie.
