St Thomas More Catholic Primary School
Inspiration, Celebration and Education
UCAS Mini-hackathon
Mini-Hackathon at UCAS
The group of 6 Year 6 Mentees from St Thomas More and 10 from All Saints’ Academy took part in a mini hackathon hosted by UCAS at their Rosehill site as part of the Wider Horizons scheme on 10th July 2019.
The pupils were tasked with developing an original idea for an app for which they produced designs and mock ups. UCAS experts in marketing and user experience design led interactive sessions to help the students understand how apps are developed in the world of business. At the end of the session the teams used this knowledge to create their designs which they presented to three members of UCAS’ Executive. The teams were judged on areas such as creativity, uniqueness, team working, presentation, business acumen and sustainability of their ideas. Charity Koosh were the winning team (ref image 5648 of Callum, Sarah, Ruby and Alex) for their app which aimed to raise money for charity through the amount of time spent on a game.
Wider Horizons is a mentoring initiative which aims to support children moving from primary school to secondary school and provides an adult role model who is neither a parent nor a teacher. The goals are to support attainment, improve confidence and give them an insight into the world of work. Wider Horizons has been running for 5 years and UCAS is one of the founding company supporters. To date around 50 members of staff have participated in mentoring 30 students once a fortnight at their school. Lucy from UCAS said “mentoring is really rewarding for both mentors and mentees and would recommend it to anyone”.