BlueShift Classroom: live online instruction with embedded analytics

我是希瑟·莱昂斯，BluesShift教育的创始人和所有者。我们通过教授8至18岁的儿童编码和数字技能，使他们能够成为数字创造者。我们希望鼓励广泛的学生用代码和数字技术进行创造，在这个过程中，帮助填补日益增长的技能缺口。我于2014年创办了BluesShift，重点是通过现场教学来激励和吸引学生。这家公司是从我在厨房餐桌旁教10个孩子开始的。我自己也是一名母亲，有UX设计、编程和教育方面的背景。自2016年以来，我们已经为我们的俱乐部和夏令营预订了6000多个房间，并与伦敦各地的20所学校合作。2020年3月，作为对COVID的回应，我们将所有的教学转移到了网上。在接下来的六个月里，我们在线教授了840名学生。虽然我们的在线教学证明了在线教学的潜力，但它也暴露了现有工具的一些痛点。年龄较小的学生，特别是7岁至11岁的学生，往往受到数字素养技能的限制，难以在编码环境和视频会议工具以及获取学习材料之间进行权衡。另一方面，教师在没有教室一般物理提示的情况下进行教学，有时缺乏实现最佳学习结果所需的反馈。针对我们从学生、家长和教师那里收集的1500多条反馈，我们构建了BluesShift教室的原型并进行了概念验证。该工具使用基于浏览器的扩展来进行实时会话，因此学生不再需要在多个窗口和应用程序之间切换。教师仪表板提供了一个了解学生参与和活动的视角，帮助教师提供更好的结果。我们希望利用该奖项的财务部分来建立一个蓝移课堂的MVP。该奖项的非金融部分将是至关重要的，以帮助我们扩大我们的整体在线课程，接触到更多的学生，以及帮助我更有效地提高技能和领导能力。BluesShift课堂的提议是以研究为基础的，不同于目前市场上可用的工具。

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.