Students from Harrow College’s Digital and Creative Career College are being given the opportunity to work on a live digital project – giving them hands on industry experience, while supporting a homelessness charity.
The pioneering project is being run with The Roberts Centre - a charity which provides support for homeless children and their families – together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon.
45 technology students aged 16 and 17, comprising of students from Harrow College as well as BMet and Barking & Dagenham College, have been tasked with developing digital applications to support the launch of three new books produced by The Robert Centre.
The books, aimed at children between the ages of four and eight, will help to explain homelessness, debt and family break-up in a way that children can understand and relate to these issues.
The three colleges are all part of the national Career Colleges network, which focuses on providing employer-led curriculums for young people, preparing them for fulfilling careers in specific industries.
The Career Colleges Trust unveiled the project brief to the students at AWS’ offices in London last month (March 2017). During the day, students had the opporutnity to hear from Amazon employees and learn more about some of the latest cloud technologies available to build their applications.
The project will be managed and run in exactly the same way as a commercial new business brief. Students will have two update calls with the Project Board, focusing on design, finance, and the project plan. Both the Career Colleges Trust and AWS will sit on the project board.
Digital Lead for the Career Colleges Trust, Julia Von Klonowski, said:
“Not only will our students get a chance to use the digital skills they have been acquiring during their courses, but they’re getting first-hand experience of how a multinational company works. They are also getting insight to the huge number of career opportunities available within the growing digital sector”.
Click here for more about Career Colleges at Harrow College.