​Africa Innovate 2021 was a collaborative online conference-hackathon between Learning Connected and The Africa Centre. It successfully brought together students and professionals across Africa and the UK to compete in a hackathon for sustainable development in Africa from 21–23 July 2021.

We are proud to introduce you to our hackathon winners and participants.


First Place
InfinityLightHouse, Nigeria
An on-demand renewable energy-based power supply for users to keep their portable electronic devices charged.


Second Place
iPop, International
An Augmented Reality mobile app tailored to create a visual version of the curriculum by projecting 3D models of objects in one’s real environment.


Third Place
Health360, Ghana
A web/mobile app platform that will offer users accessibility to online medical care and health tips.


Participants
Genesis, Ghana
A safe online system that matches sponsors with underserved schools in Ghana.


Black coders, Ethiopia
An online symptom checker app that generates probable diagnoses and treatment strategies in Africa.


Witty, International
A multilingual app for the African continent that provides guidelines on waste reduction, segregation, collection and disposal best practices.


To the Stars, South Africa
A platform for people to improve their farming skills by learning with a system to guide them using simple visuals.

Edu.quotes, Egypt
A mobile app that sends university students course-specific questions via messages to maximise student engagement and helps them to succeed.


Red Alert, Kenya
A mobile app that provides farmers with real-time remote alerts to reduce post-harvest loss and makes meals safer.


Participants’ Experiences
Dorothy Orina from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Kenya shared, “We had to work with people in different locations and coordinating that is not the easiest thing, so it was a great learning experience!”


“The hackathon gave me the opportunity to appreciate different perspectives on needed solutions for Africa from experts who are already walking the talk. I got the opportunity to lead my team and connect with great mentors with wonderful perspectives, and that has also been a great experience. I was able to lead a team to develop, pitch and convince the judges to win third place. The belief of being able to make a difference on the continent has been rekindled,” said Edwin Sakyi Kyei-Baffour, MPhil Student from the University of Ghana.
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What Next?
Prizes include mentoring sessions with Tongayi Choto, Co-founder and CEO of AfriBlocks as well as with Takunda Chingonzo, Founder of The Village Innovation Network. Learning Connected will support the winners in taking their ideas forward and will link all participants with local innovation hubs.

In this interview, Todd Baldwin shares why he co-founded the platform Crafted for international food lovers usecrafted.com, @cookwithcrafted

What inspired you to start your own business?
I was always interested in entrepreneurship, but didn’t initially have any venture capitalist or technology startup connections. When I came to Princeton, it became my prerogative to connect with people who were engaging in these spaces. As part of this process, I started a company while still at university that was initially providing solar powered water filtration to developing regions. Over the winter break we built a solar powered water filtration system in Kenya. We later realised the problem was deeper than just producing low cost water filtration. The water needed to be delivered, so we started to focus on finding a solution to getting water delivered to everyone’s doorstep.

During the COVID-19 pandemic I couldn’t travel to Kenya to develop WellPower Technologies. I began thinking about what I wanted to do after college. I asked myself if I wanted a ‘traditional’ job or if I wanted to try something else. At that time, I started to get into cooking with my sister and I watched endless cookery videos. I realised that a lot of the mainstream food shows on the TV didn’t show the food that we grew up with — I’m from the South. Food is so tied to culture and identity. Diverse cultures are not represented in mainstream media. I wanted to build a unique business that solved this problem.
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How did you develop your business idea?
I started talking to more food blogging friends to find out how the system works. I became aware of why food videos from diverse cultures are so hard to find. It’s very hard to drive traffic back to your site unless a large food account posts one of your recipes because they’re catered to the mainstream audience. They don’t give a whole lot of exposure to niche cuisine. I wouldn’t consider African food a niche cuisine — there’s an entire continent of diverse dishes!

What does Crafted do?
Crafted is a live streaming platform for food content creators. Creators can create paid or free live streams on our platform, collect tips, engage with fans through live chat functions, and get booked for private virtual events. Crafted celebrates culture through food. What really excites me is that Crafted empowers others to build small businesses, sustain themselves, do something they love and at the same time share more on their culture. I would really be excited if ten years from now a group of millionaires were created through using Crafted alone.

What have been the main challenges in setting up Crafted?
To date, meeting people and looking for investors online. It is great to meet people consistently in person but it has been so hard to do during the times of COVID-19. We are still fairly young and there are many more challenges to come.
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What pieces of advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Just like Nike, just do it! If it’s not your main gig, really try to work on it on evenings and weekends.

Start small and distill your idea down to a minimum viable product. Think about the simplest way you can prove people want what you’re building. In general, that should only take you a week or two to build. If it’s taking too long than that, you aren’t thinking simple enough, make it as simple as you possibly can. You could make a landing page with a one liner about your company and drive traffic to it. That would be perfect proof in people wanting what you’re trying to build.
Test early. Increased interaction will help you gain confidence in your idea. You’ll feel much better about developing the idea further.

Create a bank of ideas. I have a list of ideas on my phone that I’m constantly adding to as soon as an idea comes to me. I’ve a compilation of hundreds of ideas that I could be working on for a startup. I’ve found it has boosted my creative thinking.

If you have more than one business idea, take a step back and think about what type of business you want to build and why. Do you dream of starting up a venture backable business that scales rapidly or do you want to set up a lifestyle brand? I’d recommend focusing on the idea that has the biggest market opportunity. Which one do you feel you are uniquely-mostly equipped for? Which one is your skill set mostly aligned with? Do you see a path where you can turn the idea into a fast growing company? Whatever you do, you need to be incredibly passionate about it because it’s going to be a long road.
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Todd Baldwin graduated from Princeton University in Chemical Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, he co-founded WellPower Technologies, a company that provided on-demand clean water delivery in Kenya through a smartphone application.

Not only does the teaching profession need to be more sustainable but also our vision, curricula and pedagogy for affording our students a real purpose for learning and fostering immersion. Children in primary settings are already generating creative ideas and demonstrating active interest in helping adults ensure they grow up in a world that is protecting their future, and adolescence is the pivotal time for developing their “executive function skills”.¹ In my experience, pupils are bursting with imagination and ambition when passionate about the change(s) they want to actualise for the planet they inhabit. They seem uninhibited by barriers and their eagerness to get going in the here and now is palpable. Their energy needs to be celebrated and harnessed for the sustainability of enriching and progressive education, which can be profoundly manifested in them being agents for change in community contexts for a global landscape.
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“Civic engagement is key for sustainability”.² We need imagination to go beyond and fuse Reading, Writing and Arithmetic into ambitious cross-curricular lesson planning to reveal to our students the interdependence of the environment, economy and society for reaching the depths of understanding required for shaping a better world. Generation Z is the future and so have an inherent interest in becoming thoughtful and proactive citizens in the process. This inclusive approach enables pupils to do the work themselves. Research and evidence-based findings prove that when students identify with a real world problem they exercise metacognitive strategies as their passion and commitment for problem-solving drives them to achieve longer term outcomes.³ Sustainability is a lens through which children and indeed, education institutions can examine local and wider reaching topics. In this way, connections between environmental integrity, social equity and economic prosperity can be appreciated as codependent and interconnected across the world. We can shift perspective to integrative learning for developing awareness around sustainability, and for understanding and skills to tackle its related dilemmas. Ethical leadership for adults and aspirational ethical leadership for students. Nourishing and challenging sustenance is required to feed children’s appetite for learning and it is for us as educators to facilitate opportunities for their authentic discoveries of the world around them and provide platforms upon which they can make the difference they determinedly champion.

Parallels can be drawn for the benefit of sustaining educators. By making a career in teaching more sustainable and creating learning around sustainability for students, education can support and initiate efforts for a ‘greener’ future. Protecting the professionalism and wellness of educators enables them to do the vital work that brought them to teaching in the first place, ultimately benefiting students. My interpretation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs⁴ reminds us to ensure the basics are met for educators and pupils, and sustainability is at the heart of creating humane conditions for teaching and learning.⁵

Ecological sustainability views human beings as part of nature and Orr⁶ encourages us to use nature as a model for growth. I believe we can synergise growth and sustainability if we lead, teach and model the importance of taking care of our precious resources for ‘greener’ growth.

We need to rethink our teaching and learning objectives to deconstruct the mystery and sometimes overly complicated definitions of sustainability for all students (and adults) to grasp. And in doing so create an interdisciplinary curriculum with hands-on activities in place-based and service contexts. Helping to improve their school, neighbourhood and planet will give students life meaning and their worldview will expand as global issues are tackled from organic purposeful work. Sustainability will no longer be an abstract concept but instead as tangible and expected in their school day as the 3 R’s. Ideally, sustainability will be embedded into the culture, ethos and values of education and the 3 R’s will form part of a unified approach, which given the limits of the earth, will be unshakeable.
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Kirsty Knowles is an Education Leader and recent Head of a Junior School.
References
1. Center on the Developing Child. (2012) Executive Function (InBrief).
From: www.developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/what-is-executive-function-and-how-does-it-relate-to-child-development/
2. Strategies for Education for Sustainability
From: www.kdp.org/initiatives/pdf/efsguide_section2.pdf
3. Center on the Developing Child. (2012) Executive Function (InBrief).
From: www.developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/what-is-executive-function-and-how-does-it-relate-to-child-development/
4. Maslow, A. (1943) A theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–396.
5. Farber, K. (2020) www.edutopia.org/article/7-ways-make-teaching-more-sustainable-profession
6. Orr, D. (1991) Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. State University of New York Press.

Howbury School is based in Lagos and organises a summer internship for students to develop innovative solutions to sustainable development goals. This article shares how students in years 9 and 13 created an application to resolve local waste disposal problems.

Identifying the community issue
When walking around the Mende community of Maryland, students noticed that the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) waste disposal facilities were left uncleared and were spilling into the road. The students were concerned about the adverse effects this was having on the environment and the community.

Taking action
The students brainstormed ways they could resolve the waste issue and decided to create a waste management application. Using their knowledge of web programming, Python programming language and the Django web framework, the students created a community waste alert blog where members of the community could take a photograph of any uncleared heap of waste and could add its location so that LAWMA officials were alerted and cleared the rubbish. Students received coaching on how they could build their web-based application throughout the project from Mr. Biodun Ayobami, a LAWMA engineer. When the students had completed the web aspect of the project, they shared the live web blog to their school community and parents. Interns then challenged the local community to test the application by taking photographs of any uncollected waste and uploading them to the blog.

Reflection
This project involved careful planning. The students engaging with the external expert played a crucial role in the development of the application. The external expert mentored the students and provided them with critical feedback on how they could develop their product through drawing upon his own professional experience. We recommend for students to have basic knowledge in Python and Django before attempting such a project. This internship programme gave students hands-on experience of developing an application to resolve local waste disposal problems.

Howbury School is a family oriented Nursery and Primary School offering a blend of the Nigerian and English National curriculum.
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It is only with active reflection that we can strive to understand how our values and assumptions guide our thinking and responses. Reflection which integrates experience with new learning and knowledge from different academic disciplines is an opportunity for pedagogical and leadership development. Reflective practice brings about innovative and resourceful thinking for the progress of students, educators and schools.

The practice of reflection is an extremely effective tool for gaining conclusions and generating ideas from an experience, involving open minded and personal searching for why and how. And from reflection, a questioning approach for teaching and learning and leadership forms (Kolb, 1984 and Gibbs, 1998). As educators, we need to imaginatively stimulate enquiry in young children, foster eager minds to ask questions, be interested in, and richly engage with their learning for them to achieve their personal best and experience deep contentment and love for what they are doing. I would argue that the same is fundamental for leaders in relation to their colleagues. Both of Schön’s (1991) recommendations of ‘Reflection-in-action’ and ‘Reflection-on-action’ seem thoroughly worthwhile. As the former suggests, reflection might most constructively be practised ‘in the moment’ when something surprising or unexpected takes place. To create ideas for the future, carrying out reflection after an event would be better served. Indeed, a mix of the two could be more instinctive, remembering that reflection is not to be prejudiced by personal and reactive feelings and thoughts but instead, an examination of self and others in a given situation for higher learning. In agreement with Fording (2017), reflective leadership diverts from an “action bias” to collaboration, and therefore prevents imposition and autocracy on others.
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A constructivist approach (Densten and Gray, 2016) to learning enables progress by recognising that concepts are not static and by encouraging the process to be the learner’s responsibility. This too can empower and promote autonomy for educators, and also create a culture of collective ownership for learning and everyone contributing to the development of the school. It is important for all members of staff to feel a sense of worth and purpose in working together for a unified ethos and vision. For individuals to feel safe they need leaders to provide respectful space for them to work things out for themselves. When trust from leaders has been instilled even resistance to change can be welcomed as a pause for contemplation. Listening to reasons for resistance not only values the person(s) who is/are resisting but opens up dialogue for facilitating reflection, which could ultimately lead to a different but shared understanding and inspired path. Sometimes resistance can be one person’s demonstration of consideration for change and thus, being interested in it is just as important as cooperation (Hardingham, 2004).

I believe that reflection in education is “learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and practice” (Finlay, 2008). Three strategies for practising reflection for enhancing the experience and success of learning, and for invigorating and bringing about transformative leadership are effective questioning, providing affirmations and using active listening. Padesky (1993) favoured conversations with no pre-determined destination so that detours were not missed and shared dialogue could lead to a more creative and fitting solution. And with this, educators and leaders need to employ the art of effective questions which avoid slipping into a telling mode. Learners and colleagues should be enabled to rethink their assumptions, consider their values, identify alternatives and draw upon different modes of thinking when problem-solving (Clutterbuck, 2013). As we learn and work in teams, affirmations can strengthen a sense of alliance and collaboration, and for the greatest positive impact, should be specific and observation-based. Attentive listening, which reflects what is heard can demonstrate benevolence and compassion towards individuals. Being present as the process of learning is unfolding creates deeper empathy and working together for a jointly invested goal.

Too often, decisions and indeed, changes are made without reflection and have rather been reached from confusion with interpretation. And therefore, becoming ‘psychologically minded’ (Stein 2018) builds our capacity for separating the specifics about what we observe from evaluation influenced by innate personality traits, what has happened and principles we uphold. Without reflection, individuals could exist in a vacuum of ego, conflicting with external perceptions of them. Time to reflect needs to be carved out and reflection encouraged as important and valued for both learners and leaders. Indeed, we as leaders are always learning!

Kirsty Knowles is an Education Leader and recent Head of a Junior School.
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References
Bachkirova, T (2011). Understanding yourself as a coach
From Passmore, J (2020) ed. The Coaches’ Handbook: The Complete Practitioner Guide for Professional Coaches. Routledge. Section 4

Clutterbuck, D (2013). Powerful Questions For Coaches And Mentors: A practical guide for coaches and mentors. Wordscapes

Densten, I and Gray, J (2016). Leadership development and reflection: what is the connection? From www.researchgate.net

Finlay, L (2008). Reflecting on ‘Reflective practice’. Practice-based Professional Learning Paper 52. The Open University
From www.cambridge-community.org.uk

Fording, S (28th November 2017). Reflective Leadership
From www.engageforsuccess.org

Dr Gerald Stein (2018). What Does It Mean to be ‘Psychologically Minded?’
From www.drgeraldstein.wordpress.com

Gibbs, G (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford Polytechnic

Hardingham, A (2004). Understanding your clients
From Passmore, J (2020) ed. The Coaches’ Handbook: The Complete Practitioner Guide for Professional Coaches. Routledge. Section 5

Kolb, D (1984). Kolb’s Learning Styles and Experiential Learning Cycle
From www.simplypsychology.org

Padesky, C (1993). Socratic Questioning: Changing Minds or Guiding Discovery?
From keynote address presented at the 1993 European Congress of Behaviour and Cognitive Therapies, London www.padesky.com
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Rosenberg, M (2005). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. PuddleDancer Press. pp. 28–33

​Schön, D (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Routledge

Our school has a lot of big personalities, they like to talk, collaborate, and even argue about their Mathematics.
The Creative, Collaborative Classroom (or C3) is the term used to describe activities in the school that get several classes working together. The school has created a collaborative learning space large enough to fit three classes, Students have access to breakout rooms for targeted learning moments and several forms of technology. Ideally the learning revolves around solving some problem that the students can relate to.
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My World
One project is titled ‘My World’ and requires students to plan the renovation of a space that is important to them. Students calculate areas within the room for painting and floor coverings, create a scale model, and calculate the cost of paint, floor coverings and a few space saving furniture items, justifying the economy of their suggested purchases.

The Task:
Your job is to plan the redecoration of a space you love.
You must:
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● Take measurements
● Create a scale drawing or 3D scale model.
● Calculate the area of the floor and walls
● Calculate the cost of paint and carpet and any other decorative features you wish to incorporate. Explain how you are getting value for money with the choices you have made.

In all cases you should justify your calculations by showing your working out as well as explaining your reasoning as to why you chose the methods you did.

Container Challenge
Students are shown a new, environmentally friendly drink packaging that decomposes in just 7 years. It is a more expensive packaging option, so students are challenged by a local company to find an aesthetically pleasing container shape that will fit nicely in the fridge door, stack well, hold exactly a litre of a new flavoured drink and, importantly, minimises the use of packaging material. There needs to be three options examined by the students, who build the one they think is best, test it holds exactly a litre of liquid, and create the new flavour’s label and jingle.
This project was judged by older students, and the local company provide some prizes for the winning entries. In the process students learn about surface area, volume, costing, and practice their mathematical communication by demonstrating their calculations and justifying their choices.

The Task:
A local company are looking for a new style of drink container. Your team of 2–3 has been asked to design the new container and advertising material to go with it. It should have a minimum surface area and hold exactly 1 litre of liquid. You will also need to consider how the container looks, how easy it is to hold and how well it will stack and fit in the fridge door.
Your task is to produce three ideas for the solid and show the calculations for their surface area and volume. Choose one and create a prototype. A plastic bag inserted in the container prototype will allow it to hold liquid. You must design a label and a jingle for your new product.
Please ask if you have production questions.
Peer marking will occur in week 9 using the marking grid below. The company will be coming on the last C3 day to judge the best 10 containers and hand out prizes.
Good luck!

The Importance of Samples and/or Scaffolding
One of the things we have discovered from running this type of activity is how important it is to have student samples available. Students get a good idea of exactly what is expected from having a look at past student submissions. Alternatively, good scaffolds can help students step through the task.

Valuing the Learning
These projects are built into the formal assessment for Mathematics, so that students understand the learning is considered important and not just a fun add on. Students really seem to enjoy working with peers in other classes and being able to appreciate the classroom learning applied to a context.

​Marking Guidelines
C3 tasks are launched with marking rubrics. This allows students to maximise heir marks by being able to self-assess against the rubric. It also ensures that peer or teacher marking is consistent, and fairly quick, and helps provide obvious feedback to the student where they are not judged at the highest possible level.

Supporting activities
Students also engage regularly in vertical whiteboarding. After a period of exploring individually, or engaging with content and examples, students are invited to solve problems in small groups at the classroom walls, which are covered in whiteboards. It does not suit every student, and might not be used every lesson, but the school experience is that students find it easier to make mistakes to learn and grow when using the whiteboards.
Another example of collaborative learning is the morning study program. Every morning several classrooms are opened at 8am, allowing students to bring homework, assignments, and study into the room, and offering a light refreshment. The classrooms are staffed by Year 10 tutors, volunteer teacher education students from the local university, and a rostered faculty member. The refreshments are donated by the school community.

Reflection
Students have been observed to be highly engaged in these types of tasks and showing ownership of their learning. Collaboration tends to be broader than simply between students, extending to other year levels through peer marking, between students and teachers, between staff in planning, conducting and evaluating the learning, and with families through the homework components.
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Cassandra Portelli is the Head Teacher of Mathematics at Hunter School of Performing Arts, New South Wales — a school that champions creative and collaborative classrooms. Cassandra believes passionately in the value of mentoring new teachers, and promoting financial literacy for young people.

Teachers have no time to waste. Too often our quest for the right activity means wading through mountains of irrelevant material, only to find items incomplete, poorly formatted or frustratingly not quite right for the courses we teach. Moreover, these materials are often not designed with the learning experience in mind. Before students explore a subject in-depth, it is essential they have a strong foundation of knowledge and skills to build upon. What questions can we ask to best guide their learning experiences?

The student driven learning experienceLike teachers, students need to regularly reflect on their learning to understand the skills and knowledge they have developed. This can be done through identifying key strengths and areas for development. Through measuring their progress, they effectively navigate their own learning trajectory — that is, maintain activity in their zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky defined the ZPD as the difference between the current level of cognitive development and the potential level of cognitive development. To support students to move through the ZPD, educators can use scaffolding strategies. Diagnostically structured questions are a good starting point for supporting students in this self directed approach.

Diagnostic Multiple Choice questionsDiagnostic Multiple Choice (MC) questions are your typical MC questions designed to include incorrect answers which unambiguously indicate a specific misconception. For example, consider the following MC question:
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Consider a game where two dice are rolled and their sum calculated. If you roll a 2, 3, or 12 on the first roll you lose. If you roll a 7 or 11 on the first roll you win. Any other number on the first roll becomes the target. Your goal is now to roll your target in order to win. For example, if you roll a 10 on the first roll, your target to win is now 10 — so you keep rolling until you either roll a 10 to win or a 7 to lose.
Select options for the items P, Q & R as indicated in the following flow diagram to complete the game logic sequence

Quality diagnostic questions have distractors that, where possible, map to a single issue. This way, students and teachers are provided with specific direction toward remedial action.

An incorrect option which combines a number of possible issues means that students who select the option may of course be having trouble in a number of different ways and therefore indicating relevant remedial action becomes something of a guessing game. For these students, you can use a variety of scaffolding strategies to review the topic and address any misconceptions. Think-pair-share or group discussion can encourage students to articulate their learning with their peers. Creating links to pre-existing knowledge can strengthen the construction of new knowledge. Visual aids can also help students to grasp concepts.
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Progressive Extended Response Questions
Extended Response (ER) questions also offer an opportunity for self diagnosis and direction by deliberately progressing questions to offer actionable exit points. As a guide, a 3 part ER question may have the following attributes:

For example, consider the same earlier question in ER form:
Consider a game where two dice are rolled and their sum calculated. If you roll a 2, 3, or 12 on the first roll you lose…

Of course there are no hard and fast rules here, however, if you stay mindful of gradually building depth and scope across the ER question, students will be able to work linearly toward their zone of proximal development.

In the Wild
While the examples provided are specific to Computer Science, the principles are certainly transferable to STEM and beyond. For example, material published by Craig Barton clearly articulates analogous principles for Diagnostic (MC) Questions in mathematics — he has some great videos on YouTube worth checking out too.

I encourage teachers and content developers to keep these simple ideas in mind in order that actionable feedback and deeper progressive learning experiences are baked into the building blocks of the tests and activities we rely on — those humble questions.
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Andrew Belegrinos is the Founder and Director of N7 Education.
N7 Education supports teachers by providing a growing bank of over 250 diagnostic Multiple Choice and progressive Extended Response questions (mapped to your study design) in support of deeper learning experiences in Computer Science. Looking to quickly find similar material or share some of your own gems? … This question and many more (together with all answers) are available at www.n7.education PS: More STEM subjects to come!
Andrew is an experienced IB Mathematics & Computer Science Teacher at Preshil -The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, Melbourne. Andrew has diverse experience as a software engineer, GIS specialist and content consultant in Mathematics.

by Ioanna Georgiou 

As a maths teacher of more than fifteen years or so, I have been encountered with the questions “why do we do this?” and “how is this useful?” a few too many times to ignore.


The questions are more than fair: the mathematics taught in school was discovered (or invented, depending on your philosophical inclination) several centuries ago. The mathematics used behind the scenes in our increasingly technologically advanced lives are nowhere to be seen in school. So indeed, why and how?
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School mathematics forms the basis of more advanced concepts and of course without the fundamentals it is impossible to go any further. Hence it is out of necessity that this is what is taught in school (in terms of content — not approach). This fundamental part of mathematics, albeit now very old and simplistic in a sense, was of course once the cutting edge of what was going on.

Many years ago, as an undergraduate student of mathematics, I came across a most wonderful novel called “The Parrot’s Theorem” by the French author Denis Guedj. In this seemingly ordinary novel that starts with a fire at a house and a subsequent death of its (mathematician) owner, the reader does not know whether the fire was an accident, a murder or even a suicide. The mathematician had incidentally shipped his entire library of maths books to his friend in Paris; devastated by the loss of his friend, and determined to find out whether there was a connection between the death and the shipment of books he had received, he summons his extended family and together they go through the books. That’s where the author essentially embarks the reader on a journey through maths.


Seeing mathematical ideas emerging in their local societies through practical needs as well as intellectual curiosity was eye-opening. Everything suddenly started falling into place for me, an adult undergraduate maths student. And then it occurred to me: if this is helpful for me, a person already quite into maths, maybe it’ll help people who feel alienated by the strict and abstract symbolic form. A form lacking any sentiment — apart from maybe fear and anxiety.
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I took modules on the history of maths, expanded my own readings, and during my MSc and MPhil studies I continued to look into educational approaches through the history and local practices such as ethnomathematics. As a practitioner, I use those stories in my teaching. I have also been presenting masterclasses and workshops on “stories from maths” for the Royal Institution of Great Britain and also independently. It is highly satisfying to see the students’ faces lit up when they realise the reason why calculating in fives and tens is so easy: it has always been with them, their own personal abacus — their fingers! Or that the peculiar number 360, (who would have chosen that number to describe the degrees in a circle!) is nothing but a nicely (albeit strictly speaking wrong) rounded version of the days in a year.
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This experience has culminated in the writing of my first nonfiction book for children, entitled “Mathematical Adventures!” Through this book I aspire to give learners a glimpse of how it all started, and how it progressed, making some stops to times and events that were rather seminal. Tarquin Group, a publisher that specialises in educational and recreational mathematics books was supportive from the beginning and showed real faith in the book.
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The content has been thoroughly trialled for many years. The students’ answers to my questions and their own questions have given shape to the stories that made it through; distilled, concise and relevant, there are lots of connections with what they see in school, alongside some more recent maths that did not make it through the curriculum such as Euler’s graph theory or Cantor’s mind-bending multiple infinities. Euclid’s postulates leading to all the school geometry are fascinating and could not have imagined them coming more alive than in Asuka Young’s illustrations. Her amazing interpretation of these stories from maths have made the book a colourful adventure which I hope many students, parents and teachers alike will enjoy to embark upon!
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Ioanna Georgiou is the Head of Mathematics & Head of Academic Enrichment at St James Senior Girls’ School, London. She is also a Masterclass Presenter
at The Royal Institution of Great Britain.
Buy Mathematical Adventures here: https://www.tarquingroup.com/mathematical-adventures.html

The Literacy Pirates works exclusively with young people who are both falling behind at school and have fewer advantages in their personal circumstances. Did you know that in the UK your socioeconomic background is still the greatest determinant of your educational success? In fact, two in three children living in low-income households in the UK fall below the expected levels in reading and writing by the age of 11. This attainment gap widens further as children transition from primary to secondary school. This results in low self-confidence, slower progress, and a bleak long-term outlook.

This intractable social challenge lies at the heart of The Literacy Pirates reading and writing intervention.
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The Literacy Pirates learning programme is a year-long, after-school learning programme devised and led by teachers. During the weekly session children aged 9 to 12 years old work to improve their reading and writing skills, as well as increase their confidence as learners and ability to persevere and keep on going when things get tough in the classroom. We work exclusively with children referred by their school, who identify children who are both falling behind in their educational attainment and they know have fewer opportunities outside of school. By working with teachers, we access children we couldn’t otherwise reach and we are assured they are the right ones who really need our help.

We have embraced being a venue based, out of school and intense programme by setting the learning programme in a fantastical environment with murals, decking, a Pirate’s cat and secret passageways. The children are given adult volunteer support while a qualified and experience teacher leads the session. And importantly, we know children learn best when working towards tangible, published projects, so each term the young people create high quality published books, films and apps.

Established in 2010, we have worked with 720 children on our intense programme offered in Dalston, Hackney. We are confident in the difference we can make because we have an excellent track record. On joining us at age 9, children are on average 13 months behind their peers; and 24 months behind when they join at age 11. We close this gap by improving their reading age over 50% faster than age-related expectations. Furthermore, 100% of Young Pirates who say they don’t enjoy reading for pleasure at the start of the programme have changed their minds by the end. 95% of parents saw an increase in confidence; and 78% of teachers saw an increase in perseverance in the classroom.
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As an organisation we have now decided to replicate that success in other London boroughs and are working to reach 800 children annually by opening an additional three learning centres or Ships. The first of which opened in January this year in Tottenham, Haringey Pirates. It is an exciting phase of growth in which to reflect on what makes the difference; through all the joy and fun of a learning programme on a Pirate's Ship what actually drives the impact that we see happening through the learning programme?

Our founder was a teacher and the programme devised by teachers. It was designed to align with schools’ goals, working to compliment teachers work in classroom, but not duplicate. We thought carefully about the different elements that we believe drive our impact. One of the central aspects of our Learning Programme is the creation of published projects; books, films and apps that showcase the creative writing of the children.
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Publishing the children’s written work is both motivating and confidence building.

We work for a full year with children, it’s an intense two-and-half hour weekly session. Every term they will produce just two pieces of writing that they have worked really hard to refine. The theme is always close to home, building on who and what they know and love. The learning comes in the process of writing a piece that requires drafting and redrafting. As you can imagine the fatigue can be real for children to go back over their work again and again. That is where the carrot of publishing their work comes in. ‘Let’s work hard on this, because in a month you are going to have that piece of work published in a book and show it off to your Headteacher’ or ‘Keep going, it will be worth it when you hear yourself speak those words on the big screen at the cinema next month’. School often works on delayed gratification, where the reward for hard work comes at the end of the year as a single result or even exam results at the end of a school career. Publishing children’s work, in our experience, gives them immense motivation in the here and now to put in greater effort.

Publishing the children’s writing also boost confidence. Receiving a copy of a high-quality printed book, with your work, name and this year we included photo is massive! How many of us can boast at being published authors or film screen stars! To make the most of this confidence boost, we put on a celebration event every time we publish their work. We invite parents and carers, teachers and Heads as well as local community leaders and funders. These events are a chance to mark the hard work and achievement of the children. In our spirit of being relentlessly positive, the children perform and speak about their achievement, we have our teachers reflect the journey to date and because we are Pirates, we always play a game or two.

The overachieving sentiment at The Literacy Pirates is relentless positivity. We are not much into failure. Though as teachers we know it has a place in education, we are working with children who are not experiencing success in school as other children might. When you have experienced success regularly, finding the energy to keep going and handling set-backs comes more easily. For those that do not experience success regularly at school, it’s much harder to find the confidence and grit to give it ago. That’s why published projects are a key part of learning programme; they allow the children to experience being motivated, achieving success and being appreciated in a genuine way for that achievement.

There is another element to publishing the children’s work which is that it gives us an opportunity to talk about the full cycle of learning and how it feels to succeed. Talking about how we learn, metacognition, is increasingly understood as key to improving outcomes for children at school. The extended time taken over writing projects at The Literacy Pirates means the children experience planning, drafting, redrafting and experiencing success over a term rather than squeezed into a lesson, day or maybe a week. It gives them time to actually experience and reflect on each aspect as it takes place — the excitement at having an idea, the confusion at planning a story, to surprise at creating an interesting character, the exhaustion of working hard at redrafting, the delight and satisfaction at seeing your own work published. We use a Pirates Log at the end of each session to write down What Went Well and what could be Even Better If’s. We challenge the children to think about the extent of their effort over the session, asking them to be honest and reiterating what normal effort looks like compared to intensive effort or at the other end of the spectrum, ‘just showing up’.

Key things to consider with published projects:

1. Quality needs to be really good. Investing in good design and expensive production is important to create something to be treasured for a lifetime.
2. Taking your time. Allow the process of creation as well and the moment of accomplishment to be given time and space it deserves.
3. Make it relevant. Using a recording studio, putting a film on at the cinema plays into popular dreams of success. Making the themes relevant to children’s lives also adds a dimension of ownership and pride.
4. Co-create. Give the children an opportunity to input into the production process — decide on the name, maybe even design elements. Let them write the introduction to the book, give the blurb for the film or write the instructions for an app.
5. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Make sure the ‘published’ part means getting exposure as far and wide as possible and that the accolades pour in.

Like all educational programmes we are complex in nature; weaving together different physical aspects, pedagogical instruments and psychological processes. It took two years to create the focused programme we know today and another two years to develop a Theory of Change and the right measurement tools to monitor the outcomes. No doubt the next two years of replicating our success, will teach us a lot about ourselves too. And we are looking forward to learning those lessons.

A Case Study

Tayo was referred at age 10 to the programme to give him a boost in literacy as he was attaining below age-related expectations. Although he was engaged in the programme right from the start, in sessions he was often very shy and did not like speaking in a group or performing.

By the end of the year, Tayo’s session leader reported an “explosion in confidence”, which was backed up by his teacher and parents. His teacher said “Tayo has really come out of his shell this year and is a visibly more confident boy”. Both Tayo and his parents mentioned that he was no longer afraid to talk in front of a crowd.

During the programme Tayo’s reading age increased over two times faster than age-related expectations giving him a reading age of well over 12 years old. His teacher told us that he was “back on track” at school.
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Tayo told us that before Hackney Pirates “I wasn’t really doing really well. But now I am confident and better at reading and writing.”

Website: www.literacypirates.org
Twitter: @LiteracyPirates
Instagram: literacypirates