Learners Y Factor - London - 2011

Hosted as part of the LWF Festival's Sunday Service the Learners Y Factor is a showcase of young UK talent using affordable technologies from mobile to video games and social media to improve their learning and develop skills that prepares them for a successful future.

BEATRIX POTTER SCHOOL - LONDON - AGES 9-11

The Digital Orchestra is a multimedia, interactive, performance. Pupils, teachers from local schools along with dance and performance specialists and artists and technology consultants from Wandsworth City Learning Centre have collaborated to create a series of unique multimedia performances based on a range of curriculum themes. Participants use various touch devices as part of their performance to create a "live" media scape environment within which additional performers and audience members interact.

The performances utilise video, music, lighting and other stage effects controlled by various touch controllers and interfaces. The performances feature a mixture of dancers, musicians, technicians and audience participation. The basis of the project are the touch controllers? i.e. iPad, iPhone, iTouch and Android phones as well as a cluster of computers running each area such as the video, music and lighting. The pupils have designed the touch interfaces as well as creating the media to trigger both the musical and visual elements. Each controller is deployed to a specific task decided by the students. The students have designed specific controller graphic user interfaces (GUI?s) to their taste in the preparatory sessions as well as creating the musical and video elements as well as choreographing and directing the movement.

CENTRAL FOUNDATION SCHOOL FOR GIRLS - LONDON - AGES 13-18



Since September 2010, 19 girls between 13-18 years have been working hard to come up with problems they want to see solved through mobile apps in their communities. In teams of 2-5 they have been working through critical thinking, market research, design, technical feasibility, UI design and business models to make it happen. Apps for Good is a program by education charity CDI Europe that is delivered in partnership with Central Foundation Girls School in Tower Hamlets.

SALTASH.NET COMMUNITY SCHOOL - CORNWALL - 15-17



We are a group of students who love games based learning but want to help younger students solve problems and their anxiety of the transition from primary to secondary school through the enjoyment of playing games. We without doubt as a group and our project have the Y Factor.

We are currently designing a game that will be played on the Xbox and on PC's, we are using the free Microsoft game making tool XNA to create a video game that younger students in our community can play to learn more about our school so that when they chose to attend this secondary school they are less anxious about moving from their smaller primary school. We have currently programmed the platform of the game, the layout of the school and all images and the next phase of our development is the construction of the content and the game play.

LOUGHTON SCHOOL & DENBIGH SCHOOL - MILTON KEYNES - AGES 8-12

Robot Club began as an after-school club organised for children in Years 3-6 at Loughton School, a junior school in Milton Keynes. One of the school governors, an expert in robotics, set up the club, which met after school once a week. The club was very successful and, in 2008, sent a Year Six team to China to participate in the world RoboCup Finals.

This Y Factor entry is from a group of four children who left Loughton School and moved up to secondary school this year. They were inspired to keep working on building and developing robots. The Robot Club meet at each other's houses and have built a variety of robots inspired by constructions they have found on the Internet and viewed on YouTube.

THOMAS TALLIS SCHOOL - LONDON - AGES 16-17

(note audio disturbances due to technical difficulties at venue)

In November 2010 representatives from three London schools visited the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma to collaborate with their American peers on creating a Pop Up School.

We hoped to demonstrate the ability of young learners to disrupt traditional notions of what a school could be. Rather than a bricks and mortar establishment, we set about generating social capital online in the months prior to the conference through a variety of social networks and blogs. We conceived and planned our Pop Up School collaboratively. We held Skype conference calls to get to know each other better. We created a website to host our investigations at the conference and we made a presentation to 1500 delegates about how learning is changing.

ST MARY'S PRIMARY SCHOOL - STOKE ON TRENT - AGES 9-11

We are class 6 from St Mary's RC Primary School in Stoke on Trent and we are looking at the Anglo-Saxons because we have the famous Staffordshire Hoard that we can go and visit in our Museum.

We are using Augmented Reality with a program called Second Sight and Sony PSPs. We have been creating media to put on the PSPs so that when the cameras see a semacode (which is a bit like a crossword) the things we have chosen will be triggered on the PSP and then people will get extra information. This lets us provide extra facts about the pieces of treasure in the hoard, making the hoard more exciting!