West Island School Appoints Digital Leaders

On Friday 23 September West Island School appointed its first 12 students to the newly created student leadership role of Digital Leader.  

Digital leaders are highly competent users of technology but more important is both their empathy with others who are not as skilled and additionally their ability to inspire in others a shared excitement for technology.  It is particularly important that they can present well to large audiences.

In order to find these students a two tier application process was used.  Students studying Computer Science were first encouraged to apply for the role of Digital Leader in an innovative fashion. It was up to the students to decide on their innovative application as a result a range of applications were received including letters written in binary and Morse Code.  Other applications included Caesar Ciphers and web-based games written in a variety of computer languages.

Students who were successful in the second round were invited to prepare and present a 90 second application on the subject of “My Favorite App”.

It is anticipated that these tech savvy students will act as a bridge between their teachers and the student body the Digital Leader role at WIS will be a highly visible, whole school leadership role. Initially, Digital Leaders will work in the following areas: 

• will lead assemblies on topics related to students e.g. Cyber Bullying.
• will meet Mr Sammons and add student voice to school’s policies regarding Technology.
• assigned to support faculties.  Leaders will then train teachers in that faculty during Monday afternoon’s collaboration and possibly support them in lessons.
• will represent WIS at the ESF Digital Leader Conference
• will represent WIS at the Hong Kong Teach the Teacher Conference
• will work on the WIS Genius Bar supporting students with tech
• run the WIS Genius Bar during Parent’s Evening, helping parents with tech
• advising teachers on strategies for managing student behaviour whilst using technology in lessons

Many thanks to HP and Lenovo for the digital swag which included a back pack and other useful equipment for our Digital Leaders to use in their new roles.

You can view images from the first Digital Leaders meeting below.