BlueShift Classroom: live online instruction with embedded analytics
Lead Participant:
BLUESHIFT EDUCATION
Abstract
I am Heather Lyons, the founder and owner of BlueShift Education. We empower children aged 8 to 18 to be digital creators by teaching them coding and digital skills. We want to encourage a wide range of students to create with code and digital tech, and in the process, help fill the growing skills gap.
I started BlueShift in 2014 with an emphasis on motivating and engaging students through live instruction. The company was started with me teaching 10 children around my kitchen table. I am a mother myself and have a background in UX design, coding and education.
We have taken over 6000 bookings for our clubs and camps since 2016 and work with 20 schools across London. In March 2020, as a response to COVID, we moved all of our teaching online. In the following six months we taught 840 students online.
Whilst our move online proved the potential of online instruction, it also exposed a number of pain points with respect to existing tools. Younger students, aged 7 to 11 specifically, were often limited by digital literacy skills and struggled to juggle between a coding environment and a video conferencing tool as well as access learning materials. Tutors, on the other hand, teaching without the usual physical cues of a classroom, at times, lacked the feedback they needed to achieve the best learning outcomes.
In response to 1500+ pieces of feedback we've gathered from students, parents and teachers, we have built a prototype and proof of concept for BlueShift Classroom. This tool uses a browser-based extension for live sessions so that students no longer have to juggle between multiple windows and applications. The teacher dashboard provides a view into student engagement and activity, helping teachers to deliver better outcomes.
We hope to use the financial part of the award to build an MVP for BlueShift Classroom. The non-financial portion of the award will be vital to helping us scale up our overall online offer and reach more students, as well as helping me to upskill and lead more effectively. The proposal for BlueShift Classroom is research-based and unlike tools currently available on the market.
I started BlueShift in 2014 with an emphasis on motivating and engaging students through live instruction. The company was started with me teaching 10 children around my kitchen table. I am a mother myself and have a background in UX design, coding and education.
We have taken over 6000 bookings for our clubs and camps since 2016 and work with 20 schools across London. In March 2020, as a response to COVID, we moved all of our teaching online. In the following six months we taught 840 students online.
Whilst our move online proved the potential of online instruction, it also exposed a number of pain points with respect to existing tools. Younger students, aged 7 to 11 specifically, were often limited by digital literacy skills and struggled to juggle between a coding environment and a video conferencing tool as well as access learning materials. Tutors, on the other hand, teaching without the usual physical cues of a classroom, at times, lacked the feedback they needed to achieve the best learning outcomes.
In response to 1500+ pieces of feedback we've gathered from students, parents and teachers, we have built a prototype and proof of concept for BlueShift Classroom. This tool uses a browser-based extension for live sessions so that students no longer have to juggle between multiple windows and applications. The teacher dashboard provides a view into student engagement and activity, helping teachers to deliver better outcomes.
We hope to use the financial part of the award to build an MVP for BlueShift Classroom. The non-financial portion of the award will be vital to helping us scale up our overall online offer and reach more students, as well as helping me to upskill and lead more effectively. The proposal for BlueShift Classroom is research-based and unlike tools currently available on the market.
Lead Participant | Project Cost | Grant Offer |
|---|---|---|
| BLUESHIFT EDUCATION | £50,000 | £ 50,000 |
People |
ORCID iD |
| Heather Lyons (Project Manager) |