Posts tagged submission

Kudos to the students!

On a rainy November morning I walked into the offices of the BC Principals and Vice-Principals Association not knowing what to expect. Sure I’ve been to other codeathons, or hackathons as the events are also called, but I’d never been to an event where students were the majority of the audience.

After an introduction and brainstorming session from Brent Munro of the BC Ministry of Education, the students were off and running, looking for data and trying to wrestle their ideas into a manageable form to avoid being overwhelmed by possibilities.

After searching the DataBC website for data and a bit of Google-Fu, they found the data and the tools and set to the real work of turning data into information.

And they did great! They crafted a scholarship finder to make it easier to figure out how to ease post-secondary school debt, they mapped school locations and SkyTrain crime statistics to name two projects.

Was the day a success? I’d say so. The students were able to see what data could do for themselves, their classmates and their parents.

And for some, it was their first view into a world that perhaps they would have otherwise never seen. And isn’t that what learning is all about? I think so.

Well done everyone. Thanks to the BC Principals and Vice-Principals Association and the Ministry of Education for pulling the event together.

David Wrate
Citizen Engagement Director
Province of British Columbia