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THE DRUM OCT.26.12 www.thedrum.com AGENDA11 digital <strong>The</strong> day 60 digital agencies visited 60 high schools D-Day took place on 10 October and saw 60 digital agencies paired with schools across the UK to complete challenges and address the digital skills gap. As a media partner of the BIMA initiative, <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong> ran a live blog of the day to highlight the educational value of the initiative. At present, 1.5 million people are employed in creative industries or in creative roles in other industries, accounting for 5.1 per cent of UK employment. Employment in digital has also grown at twice the rate of the whole economy, yet digital skills are often overlooked in the classroom. As part of <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong>’s coverage of the initiative, reporter Gillian West joined Govan High School and its partner agency, Spider Online, to experience BIMA D-Day first hand. In a presentation to the class, John Campbell, MD of Spider Online, discussed the value of digital as a career “you can fly” in very early on, adding: “Digital is making money right now, and this is the worst recession since the 20s.” After Campbell had spoken, the crux of the day got underway as the pupils began work on their BIMA D-Day challenge. <strong>The</strong>re were six challenges in total – design a mobile app, an innovative digital solution, a social media campaign, web coding, or multimedia content. Pupils from Govan High chose the social media challenge which saw them devise <strong>The</strong> British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) recently brought together 60 digital agencies from across the UK with over 1,800 school pupils. <strong>The</strong> D-Day challenge looked to address the digital skills gap in the UK, with the initiative pairing schools with local agencies to educate students about digital careers through hands on advice. a social media campaign for a new café. <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong>’s live blog coverage of the day asked pupils and agencies to join us by tweeting using the hashtag #BIMADDay, and roles were reversed as the pupils at Govan High taught computing teacher Mr Mullen how to tweet. It seemed Mr Mullen wasn’t the only one learning new digital skills, as one of the recurring themes of the day was the level of knowledge and insight of the school pupils involved. Abi Ellis from LBi told us one of the pupils at its partner school, Woodside High, had “explained the virtues of passbook iOS6 to me in great detail. [He’s the] best coder in the school, so they tell me. Seems like I’m learning a thing or two today.” Phil Heywood of Redweb, partnered with Avonbourne College, commented: “My big revelation for #BIMADDay was going to be user centred design. Turns out the students at #AvonbourneCollege already knew! #smartkids” Kristal Ireland, Enjoy Digital’s strategy director, was also impressed by the pupils of her partner school, David Young Com- munity Academy. In her D-Day reaction piece for <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong> she wrote: “What was most impressive was the level of digital skillz (I’ve been told z is the cool thing now) that some of the pupils had. One 16-year-old in our group had a great understanding of HTML, CSS and could use Photoshop. He came up with a very innovative iPhone app, but what was the most impressive was how excited he was about how to market the app and importantly monetise it. A great commercial head for someone of his age!” Pupils across the country were also very familiar with the use of social media and had expectations about how companies should handle customer service queries through these channels. Ireland commented on this familiarity in her analysis of the day, explaining that one of the revelations of the day was the discovery of pupils’ digital knowledge: “A standout quote of the day came from one of the Multimedia teachers, who said, ‘the students don’t understand the concept of “digital”; it’s just how their lives have always been’.” When <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong> spoke to teachers at Govan High, they echoed this, saying there is a real passion for digital amongst their pupils, but their knowledge of social media doesn’t come from the school. “It’s in their lives, they use it every day. We can’t get access to the likes of Twitter in class but they all have it on their phones, that’s how they know what to do,” explained business management teacher, Sonja Kerr. Codegent co-founder David Hart made a similar comment on <strong>The</strong> <strong>Drum</strong> live blog: “Scary and heartening that digital comes so naturally to teenagers who have grown up with it.”” With digital growing on an almost daily basis, it’s clear to see more initiatives like this are needed to get kids into a thriving industry, something mentioned by John Campbell in his presentation to Govan High: “Forget colleges and uni, it’s school level you need to start at.” Echoing this was LBi’s Ellis, who said: “<strong>The</strong>se are coders, planners, designers, imagineers, makers, movers and shakers of the future.”
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